Seven lectures to young men on various important subjects : delivered before the young men of Indianapolis, Indiana, during the winter of 1843-4

-'. ^ \ .

LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

IN MEMORY CM-
STEWART S. HOWE
JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928

STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION

170

1844

EVEN lECTlRES

YOUNG MEN,

ON VARIOUS I^IPORTANT SUBJECTS;

DELIVERED BEFOKE

THE YOUNG MEN OF INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, DURING
THE WINTER OF 1843-4.

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER.

INDIANAPOLIS:

PUBLISHED BY THOMAS B. CUTLER :

CHARLES B. DAVIS, Bookseller and Stationer :

CINCINNATI, Wji. H. Moore & Co.

1844.

Entered according to the Act of Congress:, in tiie year one thousand
eight hundred and forty-four, by

HENRY WARD BEECHER,
in the clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, within and for
the District of Indiana.

Cutier & Chamberlain, Printers.

17c

MJLu.

LYMAN BEECHER, D. D.

To you 1 owe more than to any other living being. In childhood,
you were my Parent ; in later life, my Teacher ; in manhood, my
Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles,
my knowledge, and that I am a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. For
whatever profit they derive from this little Book, the young will he
indebted to you.

INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 9, 1844.
Rev. Henry W. Beecher,

Dear Sir. — The undersigned, having listened with great in-
terest to a series of Lectures to Young Men, recently delivered by you
in this city, are persuaded that the publication of them would be emi-
nently useful to the public. They, therefore, respectfully request of
you a copy of the Lectures for that purpose, under the conviction, that
by a compliance with their wishes, you will confer a lasting benefit
upon the young men of this country.

Very respectfully, yours, &c.
HUGH O'NEAL,
S. M. HENDERSON,
J. S. KEMPER,
CHARLES W. CADY,
ROBERT B. DUNCAN.

INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 15, J844.
Rev. Henry W. Beecher,

Dear Sir. — The Lectures delivered by you in this city, dur-
ing the present winter, have afforded much gratification to a numerous
auditory; and will, we believe, have a beneficial influence in arresting
the progress of the vices, against the prevalence of which they were
directed. That their usefulness may be extended beyond the place of
their delivery, permit us to request you to authorize their publication
in a book form; confident as we are, that their merits will be highly
appreciated by an intelligent community.

We are, dear sir, yours respectfully,

JOHN D. DEFREES, of St. Joseph,
W. T. S. CORNETT, of Ripley,
SAMUEL W. PARKER, o/Fa^e«e,
OLIVER H. SMITH, of Marion,
CALVIN FLETCHER, of Marion,
JOHN DOWLING, of Vigo,
PINCKNEY JAMES, of Dearborn,
SAMUEL MERRILL, o/ JUanoji.

CONTENTS.

Lect. I. INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, 1

Lect. II. TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, ... 31

Lect. III. SIX WARNINGS, 57

Lect. IV. THE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 77

Lect. V. GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, .... 103

Lect. VI. THE STRANGE WOMAN, 131

Lect. VII. POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, 167

LECTURE 1.

Give us this (lay our daily bread. Matt. vi. 11.

This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should
he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you dis-
orderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that
are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ,
that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 2 Thess.
iii. 10, 12.

The bread which we solicit of God, he gives us
through our own Industry. Prayer sows it, and Indus-
try reaps it.

As Industry is habitual activity in some useful pursuit,
so, not only inactivity, but also all efforts without the
design of usefulness, are of the nature of Idleness. The
supine sluggard is no more indolent than the bustling
do-nothing. Men may walk much, and read much, and
talk much, and pass the day without an unoccupied
moment, and yet be substantially idle; because Indus-
try requires, at least, the intention of usefulness. But
gadding, gazing, lounging, mere pleasure-mongering, rea-
ding for the relief of ennui^ — these are as useless as
sleeping, or dozing, or the stupidity of a surfeit. A bee
is not more active than a fly, but it is more industrious, —
for it is usefully diligent: but the fly has no end in life,
but vexatious buzzing and prying impertinence. *

1

'Z INDUSTRY AND

There are many grades of idleness; and veins of it
run through the most industrious life. We shall indulge
in some descriptions of the various classes of idlers, and
leave the reader to judge, if he be an indolent man, to
which class he belongs.

1. The lazy-man. — He is of a very ancient pedi-
gree; for his family is minutely described by Solo-
mon: "How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when
wilt thou awake out of sleep?" This is the language
of impatience; the speaker has been trying to awake
him — pulling, pushing, rolling him over, and shouting
in his ear; but all to > no purpose. He soliloquizes,
whether it is possible for the man ever to wake up!
At length, the sleeper drawls out a dozing petition
to be let alone: " Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a
little folding of the hands to sleep;" and the last words
confusedly break into a snore, — that somnolent lullaby of
repose. Long ago the birds have finished their matins,
the sun has advanced full high, the dew has gone from
the grass, and the labors of Industry are far in progress,
when our sluggard, awakened by his very efforts to
maintain sleep, slowly emerges to perform life's great
duty o{ feeding — with him, second only in importance
to sleep. And now, well rested, and suitably nourished,
surely he will abound in labor. " The sluggard will not
plough by reason of the cold." It is yet early spring;
there is ice in the north; and the winds are hearty: so
his tender skin shrinks from exposure, and he waits for
milder days, — envying the residents of tropical climates,
where cold never comes, and harvests wave sponta-
neously. He is valiant at sleeping and at the trencher;
but for other courage, " the slothful man saith, there is

I D LENESS.

a lion without; I shall be slain in the street." He has
not been out to see; but he heard a noise, and reso-
lutely betakes himself to prudence. Under so thriving
a manager, so alert in the morning, so busy through the
day, and so enterprising, we might anticipate the thrift
of his husbandry. " I went by the field of the slothful
and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;
and lo! it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles
had covei'ed the face of it, and its stone wall v/as bro-
ken down." To complete the picture, only one thing
more is wanted — a description of his house — and then
we should have, at one view, the lazy-man, his farm, and
house. Solomon has given us that also: "By much
sloth fulness the building decayeth; and through idleness
of the hands the house droppeth through." Let all this
be put together, and possibly some reader may find an
unpleasant resemblance to his own affairs.

Long and late sleeping, stupid lounging, with indolent
eyes, sleepily rolling over neglected work; neglected be-
cause it is too cold in spring, and too hot in summer,
and too laborious at all times — a great coward in dan-
ger, and therefore very blustering in safety. His lands
running to waste, his fences dilapidated, his crops chiefly
of weeds and brambles; a shattered house, the side lean-
ing over as if wishing, like its owner, to lie down to
sleep; the chimney tumbling down, the roof breaking in,
with moss and grass sprouting in its crevices; the well
without pump or windlass, and its water drawn up by a
clothes-line, or a grape vine, with sometimes a pail, or
jug, or iron pot affixed.

This is the very castle of Indolence; — I would
rather be a stall-fed ox, than to be its owner; for an ox

4 INDUSTRYAND

answers his end, alive or dead; but a lazy man is good
for nothing, dead or alive.

2. Another idler as useless, but vastly more active
than the last, attends closely to every one's business,
except his own. His wile earns the children's bread,
and his; procures her own raiment and his; she pro-
cures the wood; she procures the water, while he, with
hands in his pocket, is busy watching the building of a
neighbor's barn; or advising another neighbor how to
trim and train his vines; or he has heard of sickness in
a friend's family, and is there, to suggest a hundred
cures, and to do every thing but to help; he is a spec-
tator of shooting matches, a stickler for a ring and fair
play at every fight. He knows all the stories of all the
families that live in the town. If he can catch a stranger
at the tavern in a rainy day, he pours out a strain of
information, a pattering of words, as thick as the rain-
drops out of doors. He has good advice to every body,
how to save, how to make money, how to do every
thing; he can tell the saddler about his trade, he gives
advice to the smith about his work, and goes over with
him when it is forged to see the carriage-maker put it
on, suggests improvements, advises this paint or that
varnish, criticises the finish, or praises the trimmings.
He is a violent reader of newspapers, almanacs, and
receipt books; and with scraps of history and mutilated
anecdotes, he faces the very school master, and regards
himself a match for the minister, and gives up only to
the volubility of the oily village lawyer, — few have
the hardihood to match him.

And thus every day he bustles through his multifa-
rious idleness, and completes his circle of visits, as regu-

IDLENESS. 5

larly as the pointers of a clock visit each figure on the
dial plate; but alas! the clock forever tells man the
useful lesson of time passing steadily away, and return-
ing never; but what useful thing do these busy buzzing
idlers perform?

3. We introduce another idler. He follows no voca-
tion; he only follows those who do. Sometimes he
sweeps along the streets, with consequential gait; some-
times perfumes it with wasted odors of tobacco. He
also haunts sunny benches, or breezy piazzas. His busi-
ness is to see; his desire to be seen, and no one fails
to see him, — so gaudily dressed, his hat sitting aslant
upon a wilderness of hair, like a bird half startled from
its nest, and every thread arranged to provoke atten-
tion. He is a man of honor; not that he keeps his word
or shrinks from meanness. He defrauds his laundress,
his tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at
other men's expense. He gambles and swears — and
fights, when he is too drunk to be afraid ; but still he
is a man of honor, for he has whiskers and looks fierce,
and wishes very much to have mustachios, and says,
"m/?07i 7ny honor ^ sir;'^ " do you doubt my honor ^ sir?''"'

Thus he appears by day; by night he does not appear:
he may be dimly seen flitting; his voice may be heard
loud in the carousal of some refection cellar, or above
the songs and uproar of a midnight return, and home
staggering. This well dressed creature is only a dis-
guised beast; take from him articulate speech, and
thrust him over upon his hands, and the natural j)hiloso-
pher would classify him without a moment's hesitation.

4. The next of this brotherhood excites our pity.
He began life most thriftily, for his rising family he was

1*

6 INDUSTRY AND

gathering an ample subsistence, but involved in other
men's affairs, he went dovi'n in their ruin. Late in
hfe lie begins once more, and at length just secure
of an easy competence, his ruin is compassed again.
He sits down quietly under it, complains of no one,
envies no one, refuseth the cup, and is even more pure
in morals, than in better days. He moves on from day
to day, as one who walks under a spell — it is the spell
of lethargy, of dispondency, which nothing can disen-
chant or arouse. He neither seeks work nor refuses it.
He wanders among men a dreaming gazer, poorly clad,
always kind, always irresolute; able to plan nothing for
himself, nor to execute what others have planned for
him. He lives and he dies a discouraged man, and the
most harmless and excusable of all idlers.

5. I have not mentioned the fashionable idler, whose
riches defeat every object for which God gave him birth.
He has a fine form, and manly beauty, and the chief
end of life is to display it. With notable diligence he
ransacks the market for rare and curious fabrics, for
costly seals, and chains, and rings. A coat poorly fitted
is the unpardonable sin of his creed. He meditates upon
cravats, employs a profound discrimination in select-
ing a hat, or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon
the tastefulness of a button or a collar, with the delib-
eration of a statesman. Thus caparisoned, he saunters
in fashionable galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage,
or parades the streets with simpering belles, or delights
their itching ears with compliments of flattery, or with
choicely culled scandal. He is a reader of fictions, if
they be not too substantial; a writer of cards and billet-
doux, and is especially conspicuous in albums. Gay and

IDLENESS. 7

frivolous, rich and useless, polished till the enamel is
worn off; his whole life serves only to make him an
animated puppet of pleasure. He is as corrupt in im-
agination as he is refined in manners; he is as selfish
in private as he is generous in public; and even what
he gives to another, is given for his own sake. He
worships where fashion worships — to day at a theatre —
to morrow at a church, as either exhibits the whi-
test hand, or the most polished actor. A gaudy, active
and indolent butterfly, he flutters without industry
from flower to flower, until summer closes, and frosts
sting him, and he sinks down and dies, unthought of and
unremembered.

6. One other portrait should be drawn of a business
man, who wishes to subsist by his occupation, while he
attends to every thing else. If a sporting club goes
to the woods, he must go. He has set his line in every
hole in the river, and dozed in a summer day under every
tree along its bank. He rejoices in a riding party — a
sleigh ride — a summer frolic — a winters glee. He is
every body's friend — universally good natured — forever
busy where it will do him no good, and remiss where
his interests require activity. He takes amusement for
his main business, which other men employ as a relaxa-
tion; and the serious labor of life, which other men are
mainly employed in, he knows only as a relaxation.
After a few years he fails — his good nature is some-
thing clouded, and as age sobers his buoyancy, without
repairing his profitless habits, he soon sinks to a lower
grade of laziness, and to ruin.

It would be endless to describe the wiles of idleness —
how it creeps upon men, how secretly it mingles with

8 INPUSTRYAND

their pursuits, how much time it purloins from the
scholar, from the professional man, and from the arti-
zan. It steals minutes, it clips oft' the edges of hours,
and at length takes possession of days. Where it has
its will, it sinks and drowns employment; but where
necessity, or ambition, or duty resist such violence, then
indolence makes labor heavy; scatters the attention;
puts us to our tasks with wandering thoughts, with
irresolute purposes, and with dreamy visions. Thus
when it may, it plucks out hours and rules over them;
and where this may not be, it lurks around them to im-
pede the sway of industry, and turn her seeming toils
to subtle idleness. Against so mischievous an enchan-
tress, we should be duly armed. I shall, therefore,
describe the advantages of Industry, and the evils of
Indolence.

1. A hearty Industry promotes happiness. Some
men of the greatest industry are unhappy from infelicity
of disposition; they are morose, or suspicious, or envi-
ous. Such qualities make happiness impossible under
any circumstances. The more a wholesome soil is
worked, the more fruitful it will be; but to plough a
morass, would only cause it to give forth its deadly ex-
halations.

Health is the platform on which all happiness must be
built. Good appetite, good digestion, and good sleep,
are the elements of health, and Industry confers them.
As use polishes metals, so labor the faculties, until the
body performs its unimpeded functions, with elastic
cheerfulness and hearty enjoyment.

Buoyant spirits are an element of happiness, and
activity produces them; but they fly away from slug-

I DLEN ESS. V

gishness, as fixed air from open wine. Men's spirits are
like water, which sparkles when it runs, but stagnates in
still pools, and is mantled with green, and breeds cor-
ruption and filth. God rewards with a peculiar satis-
faction, a mind in the daily discharge of its duty. The
applause of conscience, the self respect of pride, the con-
sciousness of independence, a manly joy of usefulness,
the consent of every faculty of the mind to one's
occupation, and their gratification in it — these con-
stitute a happiness as superior to the fever-flashes of
vice, as the broad and serene light of day is superior
to the storm-gleams of lighthing at midnight. Men pro-
fit by man's researches in the useful arts — in the sciences
— and in the fine arts. The mariner in strange seas,
sails with the chart of other men's voyages before him;
and by their discoveries or their mishaps, he improves
upon the track, as other ships will upon his. If on life's
sea, men were thus wise, fewer rovers would search for
the golden islands of happiness in seas, where they are
never found. After an experience of ages, which has
taught nothing different from this, men should have
learned, that satisfaction is not the product of excess, or
of indolence, or of riches; but of industry, temperance,
and usefulness. Every village has instances which
ought to teach young men, that he, who goes aside from
the simplicity of nature, and the purity of virtue, to
wallow in excesses, carousals, and surfeits, at length
misses the errand of his life; and sinking with shattered
body prematurely to a dishonored grave, mourns that he
mistook exhilaration for satisfaction, and admits that he
abandoned the very home of happiness, when he for-
sook the labors of useful Industry.

10 INDUSTRY AND

The poor man with Indastry, is happier than the rich
man in Idleness; for labor makes the one more manly,
and riches unmans the other. The slave is often hap-
pier than the master, who is nearer undone by license
than his vassal by toil. Luxurious couches — plushy car-
pets from oriental looms, — pillows of eider-down — car-
riages contrived with cushions and springs to make
motion imperceptible, — is the indolent master of these
as happy as the slave that wove the carpet, the Indian
who hunted the northern flock, or the servant who drives
the pampered steeds? Let those who envy the gay
revels of city idlers, and pine for their masquerades,
their routes, and their operas, experience for a week the
lassitude of their satiety, the unarousable torpor of their
life when not under a fiery stimulus, their desperate
enyiui, and restless somnolency, they would gladly flee
from their haunts as from a land of cursed enchant-
ment.

If a young man will learn the fruits of gay idleness, let
the physician read to him his journal of fat invalids, plump
hypochondriacs, nervous beauties, complaining belles:
let him rehearse the midnight vigils over a pimple, the
anxious nursing of a finger, the prescriptions for the
imagination, and the endless ingenuities of science in
defending the indolently aflluent, from the misery of
having nothing to do, — and he may well believe, that the
sturdy health of the plough-boy, confers more happi-
ness than all the wealth of Astor.

2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In the overbur-
dened states of Europe, the severest toil often only suffices
to make life a wretched vacillation between food and
famine; but in America, Industry is prosperity.

'\-

IDLENESS. II

Although God has stored the world with an endless
variety of riches for man's wants, he has made them all
accessible only to Industry. The food we eat, the rai-
ment which covers us, the house which protects, must
be secured by diligence. To tempt man yet more to
Industry, every product of the earth has a susceptibility
of improvement; so that man not only obtains the gifts
of nature at the price of labor, but these gifts become
more precious as we bestow upon them greater skill
and cultivation. The wheat and maize which crown
our ample fields, were food fit but for birds, before man
perfected them by labor. The fruits of the forest and
the hedge, scarcely tempting to the extremest hunger,
after skill has dealt with them and transplanted them to
the orchard and the garden, allure every sense with
the richest colors, odors, and flavors. The world is full
of germs which man is set to develope; and there is
scarcely an assignable limit, to which the hand of skill
and labor may not bear the powers of nature, — its fruits
and its flocks.

In this land of plenty, the relation between Industry
and affluence is so sure, that 1 may safely say that
riches are the sure heritage of Industry, and poverty is
the sure offspring of Indolence. The scheming specu-
lations of the last ten years have produced an aversion
among the young to the slow accumulations of ordi-
nary Industry, and fired them with a conviction that
shrewdness, cunning, and bold ventures, are a more
manly way to wealth. There is a swarm of men, bred
in the heats of adventurous times, whose thoughts scorn
pence and farthings, and who humble themselves to
speak of dollars; — hundreds and thousands are their

12 INDUSTRY ANP

words. They are men of great operations. Forty
thousand dollars is a moderate profit of a single specu-
lation. They mean to own the Bank; and to look down,
before they die, upon Astor and Gerard. The young
farmer becomes almost ashamed to meet his school
mate, whose stores line whole streets, whose stocks are
in every bank and company, and whose increasing
money is already well nigh inestimable. But if the but-
terfly derides the bee in summer, he was never known
to do it in the lowering days of autumn.

Every few years. Commerce has its earthquakes, and
the tall and toppling warehouses which haste ran up,
are first shaken down. The hearts of men fail them for
fear; and the suddenly rich, made more suddenly poor,
fill the land with their loud laments. But nothing
strange has happened. When the whole story of com-
mercial disasters is told, it is only found out that they,
who slowly amassed the gains of useful Industry, built
upon a rock; and they, who flung together the imaginary
millions of commercial speculations, built upon the sand.
When times grew dark, and the winds came, and the
floods descended and beat upon them both — the rock
sustained the one, and the shifting sand let down the
other. If Mammon would tell its secrets, it would be
known that while Industry inherits wealth. Speculation
only dreams of it. One is the heir, and the other the
hungry expectant. If a young man has no higher ambi-
tion in life than riches— Industry— plain, rugged, brown-
faced, homely clad, old-fashioned Industry, must be
courted. Young men are pressed with a most unpro-
fitable haste. They wish to reap before they have
ploughed or sown. Every thing is driving at such a

IDLKNESS. 13

rate, that they have become giddy. Laborious occupa-
tions are avoided. Money is to be earned in genteel
leisure, with the help of fine clothes, and by the soft
seductions of smooth hair and luxuriant whiskers.

Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. Shall the
promising lad be apprenticed to his uncle, the black-
smith? The sisters think the blacksmith so very smut-
ty; the mother shrinks from the ungentility of his
swarthy labor; the father, weighing the matter pru-
dentially deeper, finds that a whole life had been spent
in earning the uncle's property. These sagacious pa-
rents, wishing the tree to bear its fruit before it has
ever blossomed, regard the long delay of industrious
trades as a fatal objection to them. The son then,
must be a rich merchant, or a popular lawyer, or a bro-
ker; and these, only as the openings to speculation, —
in whose realm, are supposed to lie all the mines of
silver and gold.

Young business men are often educated in two very
unthrifty species of contempt; a contempt for small
gains, and a contempt for hard labor. To do one's own
errands, to wheel one's own barrow, to be seen with a
bundle, bag, or burden, is disreputable. Men are so
sharp now-a-days, that they can compass by their shrewd
heads, what their father's used to do with their heads and
hands. The best method of merchandising may be thus
stated. Purchase upon credit, hire a book-keeper and a
salesman ; smoke your cigar while they conduct your
affairs; and if you make nothing, a man who began with
nothing, can lose nothing. Would you practice law?
Go to an eminent attorney's office, read Byron, Bulwer
and Dickens. Then run for the legislature, and by the
2

14 IN DUST RY AND

exceeding tlesert of filthy services rendered to the party,
be sent to Congress, and tampering ^vith executive va-
nity, go abroad a Minister or come home a judge, to
make decisions in term-time, and flirtations in vacation.

Would you be a speculator? Buy up some thousands
worth of produce upon credit, run it to New Orleans
and cash it; return home and break. A few turns thus
well planned, will leave you an ample fortune, with
which to visit foreign parts. But would you be an hon-
est man, and enjoy a competence, with pleasure unknown
to the hasty wealth of sly roguery? — Work. Let your
sweat-drops wash your gains from all dishonesty.
You shall live to tell your children, that you have ob-
served or felt the wisdom of the Royal Preacher : tcealth
gathered by vanity shall be diminished, but wealth gathered
by labor shall ina-easc,

3. Industry gives character and credit to the young.
The reputable portion of society have maxims of pru-
dence, by which the young are judged and admitted to
their good opinion. Does he regard his word? Is he In-
dustrious? Is he economical? Is he free from immoral
habits? The answer which a young man's conduct
gives to these questions, settles his reception among
good men. Experience has shown that the other
good qualities of veracity, frugality, and modesty, are
apt to be associated with industry. A prudent man
w^ould scarcely be persuaded that a listless, lounging
fellow, would be economical or trust-worthy. An em-
ployer would judge wisely, that where there was little
regard for time, or for occupation, there would be as
little, upon temptation, for honesty or veracity. Pil-
ferings of the till, and robberies, are fit deeds for

IDLENESS. 15

idle clerks, and lazy apprentices. Industry and knavery
are sometimes found associated ; but men wonder at it,
as at a strange thing. The epithets of society, which
betoken its experience, are all in favor of Industry.
Thus, the terms " a hard working-man;" "an indus-
trious man;" "a laborious artizan ;" are employed to
mean, an lionest man ; a trust-ivorthy man.

I may here, as well as any where, impart the secret of
what is called good and had luck. There are men
who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite
against them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched old
age the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever ran
against them, and for others. One, with a good pro-
fession, lost his luck in the river, where he idled away
his time a-nshing, when he should have been in the
office. Another, with a good trade, perpetually burnt
up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his
employers to leave him. Another, with a lucrative busi-
ness, lost his luck by amazing diligence at every thing
but his business. Another, who steadily followed his
trade, as steadily followed his bottle. Another, who was
honest and constant to his work, erred by perpetual
mis-judgments; — he lacked discretion. Hundreds lose
their luck by endorsing ; by sanguine speculations ; by
trusting fraudulent men ; and by dishonest gains. A
man never has good luck who has a bad wife. I never
knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, care-
ful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who com-
plained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and
iron industry, are impregnable to the assaults of all the
ill luck that fools ever dreamed of. But when I see a
tatterdemalion, creeping out of a grocery late in the

16 I N D U S T R Y A N D

forenoon, with his hands stuck into iiis pockets, tlie rim
of his liat turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know
that he has had bad luck, — for the worst of all luck, is
to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler.

4. Industry is a substitute for Genius. Where one
or more faculties exist in the highest state of develop-
uient and activity, — as the faculty of music in Mozart, —
invention in Fulton, — ideality in Milton, — we call their
possessor a genius. But a genius is usual/// understood
to be a creature of such rare facility of mind, that he
can do any thing without labor. According to the
popular notion, he learns without study, and knows
w ithout learning. His mind does not absorb knowledge,
but radiates it. He is eloquent without preparation ;
exact without calculation ; and profound wiihout re-
flection. While ordinary men toil for knowledge bv
reading, by comparison, and by minute research; a
genius is supposed to receive it as the mind receives
dreams. His mind is like a vast Cathedral, through
whose colored windows the sunlight streams, painting
the aisles with the varied colors of brilliant pictures.
Such minds may exist. We have the testimony of those
veracious chroniclers, the Poets, that they do ; and nu-
merous instances are pointed out in a class of fictions
called biographies.

So far as my observations have ascertained the spe-
cies, they abound in academies, colleges, and Thespian
societies ; in village debating clubs ; in coteries of A'oung
artists, and among young professional aspirants. They
are to be known by a reserved air, excessive sensitive-
ness, and utter indolence ;. by very long hair, and very
open shirt collars ; by the reading of much wretched

IDL ENESS . 17

poetry, and the writing of much, yet more wretched ;
by being very conceited, very affected, very disagreea-
ble, and very useless : — beings whom no man wants for
friend, pupil, or companion.

Setting aside these apes or insects of Idleness, who
trouble industrious men for a little time, and then take
the way of the fly, the gnat, the musquito, and such like
buzzing impertinences ; w^e recur to the class of men
whom God has largely endowed with strength and ac-
tivity of mind. The occupation of the great man, and of
the common man, are necessarily, for the most part, the
same ; for the business of life is made up of minute affairs,
requiring only judgment and diligence. A high order of
intellect is required for the discovery and defense of truth ;
but this is an unfrequent task. Where the ordinary
wants of life once required recondite principles, they wiU
need the application of familiar truths a thousand times.
Those who enlarge the bounds of knowledge, must
push out with bold adventure beyond the common walks
of men. But only a few pioneers are needed for the
largest armies, and a few profound minds in each occu-
pation may herald the advance of all the business of
society. The vast bulk of men are required to dis-
charge the homely duties of life ; and they have less need
of genius than of intellectual Industry and patient
enterprise. Young men should observe, that those who
take the honors and emoluments of mechanical crafts, of
commerce and of professional life, are rather distinguish-
ed for a sound judgment and a close application, than
for a brilliant genius. In the ordinary business of life,
Industry can do any thing which Genius can do ; and
very many things which it cannot. Genius is usually

18 INDUSTRY AND

impatient of application, irritable, scornful of men's
duiness, squeamish at petty disgusts : — it loves a con-
spicuous place, a short v/ork, and a large reward. It
loathes the sweat of toil, the vexations of life, and the
dull burden of care.

Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by delays
and repulses, and like water, bends itself to the shape of
the soil over which it flows ; and if checked, will not
rest, but accumulates, and mines a passage beneath, or
seeks a side-race, or rises above and overflows the ob-
struction. What Genius performs at one impulse. Indus-
try gains by a succession of blows. In ordinary mat-
ters they difl'er only in rapidity of execution, and are
upon one level before men, — Avho see the result, but not
the process.

It is admirable to know that those things which in skill,
in art, and in learning, the world has been unwilling to
let die, have not only been the conceptions of genius, but
the products of toil. The master-pieces of antiquity, as
well in literature, as in art, are known to have received
their extreme finish, from an almost incredible continu-
ance of labor upon them. I do not remember a book in
all the departments of learning, nor a scrap in literature,
nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its
author has derived a permanent renown, that is not
known to have been long and patiently elaborated.
Genius needs Industry, as much as Industry needs Ge-
nius. If only Milton's imagination could have conceiv-
ed his visions, his consummate industry only could
have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them.
If only Newton's mind could reach out to the secrets of
Nature, even his could only do it by the homeliest toil.

IDLENESS

19

The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night dreams,
but like coral islands, they have risen from the depths
of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the
ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor.
The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished
like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them
permanence. The mind, like the soil, spontaneously
gives only a rank luxuriance of useless weeds, and
bitter fruit; and only then is its treasure worth our
hand, when toil has slain the weeds, and laborious skill
developed a luscious fruit.

From enjoying the pleasant walks of Industry we
turn reluctantly to explore the paths of Indolence.

All degrees of Indolence incline a man to rely upon
others, and not upon himself; to eat their bread and not
his own. His carelessness is somebody's loss ; his ne-
glect is somebody's downfall ; his promises are a per-
petual stumbling block to all who trust them. If he
borrows, the article remains borrowed ; if he begs and
gets, it is as the letting out of waters — no one knows
when it will stop. He spoils your work ; disappoints
your expectations; exhausts your patience; eats up
your substance ; abuses your confidence, and hangs a
dead weight upon all your plans : and the very best
thing an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to get
rid of him. Solomon says : Bray a fool loith a pestle^
in a mortar with wheat, yet -will not his folly depart
from liim. He does not mention what kind of a fool
he meant ; but as he speaks of a fool by pre-eminence, I
take it for granted he meant a lazy-man ; and I am the
more inclined to the opinion, from another expression
of his experience : As vinegar to the teeth, and s?noke to
the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him.

20 I N D U S T R Y A N I)

Indolence is a great spendthrift. An indolently in-
clined young man, can neither make nor keep property.
1 have high authority for this : He that is slothful in his
work, is brother to him that is a great waster.

When men conduct the waters of a neighboring
spring to their houses, the hollow log conveys the liquid,
not from itself, but from the spring. Property flows
through indolent men, from somebody who made it, to
somebody that will know how to use it.

But the malignancy of Indolence must be learned
from its effects upon the mind and morals. The mind
becomes like a noble castle abandoned of its owner.
Its gates sag down and fall ; its towers gradually topple
over ; its windows, beaten in by the tempest, give en-
trance to birds and reptiles ; and its stately halls and
capacious chambers are covered with the spider's tapes-
try, and feebly echo with mimic shrieks of the bat, blink-
ing hither and thither in twilight sports. The indolent
mind is not empty, but full of vermin. If the ap-
pointed passages of men's passions be stopped, like the
fountains of deserted cities, their waters flow down by
unlawful ' ways, to moulder and destroy the palaces
which they were built to cheer.

When Satan would put ordinary men to a crop of
mischief, like a wise husbandman, he clears the ground
and prepares it for seed ; but he finds the idle man al-
ready prepared, and he has scarcely the trouble of
sowing ; for vices, (the devil's seed) like weeds, ask little
strowing, except what the wind gives their ripe and
winged seeds, shaking and scattering them all abroad.
Indeed, lazy-men may fitly be likened to a tropical prai-
rie, over which the wind of temptation perpetually
blows, drifting every vagrant seed from hedge and hill,

IDLENESS. 21

and which — without a moments rest through all the year
— waves its rank harvest of luxuriant weeds.

First, the imagination will be haunted with unlawful
visitants. Upon the outskirts of towns are shattered
houses, abandoned by reputable persons. They are not
empty, because all the day silent ; thieves, vagabonds
and strolling women haunt them, in joint possession
with rats, bats, and vermin. Such are idle men's imagi-
nations— full of unlawful company.

The imagination is closely related to the passions, and
fires them with its heat. The day-dreams of indolent
youth, glow each hour with warmer colors, and bolder
adventures. The imagination fashions scenes of en-
chantment, in which the passions revel ; and it leads
them out, in shadow at first, to deeds which soon they
will seek in earnest. The brilliant colors of far-away
clouds, are but the colors of the storm ; the salacious
day-dreams of indolent men, rosy at first and distant,
deepen every day, darker and darker, to the color of
actual evil. Then follows the blight of every habit.
Indolence promises without redeeming the pledge ; a
mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory
of vows and oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds
more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. As
poverty waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon
such poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying
denials. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every
plan. Negligence of truth, occasional falsehood, wanton
mendacity, — these three strides traverse the whole road
of lies.

Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to lying.
Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road,

22 INDUSTRY AND

and not far apart. In directing the conduct of the
Ephesian converts, Paul says, Let him that stole, steal
no more, hiti rather let him labor, working with his
hands the thing which is good. The men who were
thieves, were those who had ceased to work. Industry
was the road back to honesty. When stores are broken
open, the idle are first suspected. The desperate for-
geries, and svvindlings of past years have taught men,
upon their occurrence, to ferret their authors among the
miemployed, or among those vainly occupied in vicious
pleasures.

The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows upon
the young, except through the necessities of their idle
pleasures. Business is first neglected for amusement,
and amusement soon becomes the only business. The
appetite for vicious pleasure outruns the means of pro-
curing it. The theatre, the circus, the card table, the
midnight carouse, demand money. When scanty earn-
ings are gone, the young man pilfers from the till.
First, because he hopes to repay, and next, because he
despairs of paying — for the disgrace of stealing ten dol-
lars or a thousand will be the same, but not their res-
pective pleasures. Next, he will gamble, since it is
only another form of stealing. Gradually excluded from
reputable society, the vagrant takes all the badges of vice,
and is familiar with her paths ; and through them enters
the broad road of crime. Society precipitates its lazy
members, as water does its filth ; and they form at the
bottom, a pestilent sediment, stirred up by every breeze
of evil, into riots, robberies and murders. An idle popu-
lation in a city, is the very nest and hatching place of all
abominations. Into it drains all the filth, and out of it.

IDLENESS. 23

as from a swamp, flow all the streams of pollution.
Brutal wretches, desperately hunted by the law, craw-
ling in human filth, brood here their villain-schemes,
and plot mischief to man. Hither resorts the truculent
demagogue, to stir up the foetid filth against his adver-
saries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, whicii can-
not rest, but casts up mire and dirt.

The results of Indolence upon communities, are as
marked as upon individuals. In a town of industrious
people, the streets would be clean ; houses neat and com-
fortable ; fences in repair ; school houses swai'ming with
rosy-faced children, decently clad, and well behaved.
The laws would be respected, because justly adminis-
tered. The church would be thronged with devout wor-
shippers. The tavern would be silent, and for the most
part empty, or a welcome retreat for weary travelers.
Grog-sellers would fail, and mechanics grow rich ; labor
would be honorable, and loafing a disgrace. For music,
the people would have the blacksmith's anvil, and the car-
penter's hammer ; and at home, the spinning-wheel, and
girls cheerfully singing at their work. Debts would be
seldom paid, because seldom made ; but if contracted,
no grim officer would be invited to the settlement.
Town-officers would be respectable men, taking office
reluctantly, and only for the public good. Public days
would be full of sports, without fighting ; and elections
would be as orderly as weddings or funerals.

In a town of lazy-men, I should expect to find crazy
houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off' ; doors
hingeless, and all a-creak ; windows stuffed with rags,
hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and
walks in winter, every side of the house would swarm

24 1 N D U S T K y A N D

with vermin In hot weather — and with starvehng pigs in
cold ; fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance,
and gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud.
Lank cattle would follow every loaded wagon, suppli-
cating a morsel, with famine in their looks. Children
would be ragged, dirty, saucy ; the school house empty ;
the jail full; the church silent; the grog-shops noisy,
and the carpenter, the saddler, and the blacksmith,
would do their principal work at taverns. Lawyers
would reign ; constables flourish, and hunt sneaking
criminals ; burly justices (as their interests might dictate)
would connive a compromise, or make a commitment.
The peace-officers would wink at tun)ults, arrest rioters
in fun, and drink with them in good earnest. Good men
would be obliged to keep dark, and bad men would
swear, fight, and rule the town. Public days would be
scenes of confusion, and end in rows ; elections would
be drunken, illegal, boisterous and brutal.

The young abhor the last results of Idleness ; but they
do not perceive that the Jirst steps, lead to the last.
They are in the opening of this career ; but with them
it is genteel leisure, not laziness ; it is relaxation, not
sloth ; amusement, not indolence. But leisure, relaxa-
tion, and amusement, when men ought to be usefully
engaged, are Indolence. A specious Industry is the
worst Idleness. A young man perceives that the first
steps lead to the last, with every body but himself. He
sees others become drunkards by social tippling — he sips
socially, as if he could not be a drunkard. He sees
others become dishonest, by petty habits of fraud ; but
will indulge slight aberrations, as if he could not become
knavish. Though others, by lying, lose all character,

IDLENESS. 25

he does not imagine that his little dalliances with false-
hood will make him a liar. He knows that salacious
imaginations, villanous pictures, harlot snuff-boxes, and
illicit familiarities, have led thousands to her door,
whose house is the loay to hell ; yet he never sighs or
trembles lest these things should take him to this inevi-
table way of damnation !

In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you will
abhor it in others, without suspecting it in yourself.
While you read, I fear you are excusing yourselves ;
you are supposing that your leisure has not been lazi-
ness ; or that, with your disposition, and in your circum-
stances. Indolence is harmless. Be not deceived : if
you are idle, you are on the road to ruin : and there are
few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice,
than a road. While I point out the temptations to In-
dolence, scrutinize your course and pronounce honestly
upon your risks.

1. Some are tempted to Indolence by their wretched
training, or rather, wretched want of it. How many
families are the most remiss, whose low condition and
sufferings are the strongest inducement to Industry.
The children have no inheritance, yet never work ; no
education, yet are never sent to school. It is hard to
keep their rags around them, yet none of them will
earn better raiment. If ever there was a case when a
Government should interfere between parent and child,
that seems to be the one, where children are started in
life with an education of vice. If, in every commu-
nity, three things should be put together, which always
work together, the front would be a grogshop^ — the
middle a jail^ — and the rear a gallows; — an infernal
3

26 I N D U S T R Y A N D

trinity ; and the recruits for this

are largely drafted from the lazy children of worthless

parents.

2. The children of rich parents are apt to be reared
in Indolence. The ordinary motives to industry are
wanting, and the temptations to sloth are multiplied.
Other men labor to provide a support ; to amass
wealth ; to secure homage ; to obtain power ; to mul-
tiply the elegant products of art. The child of afflu-
ence inherits these things. Why should he labor who
may command universal service, whose money subsi-
dises the inventions of art, exhausts the luxuries of
society, and makes rarities common by their abun-
dance 1 Only the blind would not see that riches and
ruin run in one channel to prodigal children. The most
rigorous regimen, the most confirmed industry, and
s^eadflist morality can alone disarm inherited wealth,
and reduce it to a blessing. The profligate wretch, who
fondly watches his father's advancing decrepitude, and
secretly curses the lingering steps of death, (seldom too
slow except to hungry heirs,) at last is overblessed in
the tidings that the loitering work is done — and the
estate his. When the golden shower has fallen, he rules
as a prince in a court of expectant parasites. All the
sluices by which pleasurable vice drains an estate are
opened wide. A few years complete the ruin. The
hopeful heir, avoided by all whom he has helped, igno-
rant of useful labor, and scorning a knowledge of it,
fired with an incurable appetite for vicious excitement,
sinks steadily down, — a profligate, a wretch, a villain-
scoundrel, a convicted felon. Let parents who hate
their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit

IDLENESS. 27

riches, and before long they will be stung by every vice,
racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty.

3. Another cause of Idleness is found in the secret
effects of youthful indulgence. The purest pleasures
lie within the circle of useful occupation. But the gol-
den sand of pleasure is scattered along the courses of
all the labors of love, or support, by which the family
subsists. Mere pleasure, — sought outside of useful-
ness— existing by itself — is fraught with poison. When
its exhilaration has thoroughly kindled the mind, the pas-
sions thenceforth refuse a simple food ; they crave and
require an excitement, higher than any ordinary occupa-
tion can give. After reveling all night in wine-dreams,
or amid the fascinations of the dance, or the deceptions
of the drama, what has the dull store, or the dirty shop,
which can continue the pulse at this fever-heat of de-
light ? The face of Pleasure to the youthful imagination,
is the face of an angel, a paradise of smiles, a home of
love ; while the rugged face of Industry, embrowned by
toil, is dull and repulsive : but at the end it is not so.
These are harlot charms which Pleasure wears. At last,
when Industry shall put on her beautiful garments, and
rest in the palace which her own hands have built —
Pleasure, blotched and diseased with indulgence, shall
lie down and die upon the dunghill.

4. Example leads to Idleness. Tlie children of indus-
trious parents at the sight of vagrant rovers seeking
their sports wherever they will, disrelish labor, and envy
this unrestrained leisure. At the first relaxation of pa-
rental vigilance, they shrink from their odious tasks.
Idleness is begun when labor is a burden, and industry
a bondage, and only idle relaxation a pleasure.

28 . INDUST R Y AN D

The example of political men, office seekers, and pub-
lic officers, is not usually conducive to Industry. The
idea insensibly fastens upon the mind, that greatness
and hard labor are not companions. The inexperience
of youth imagines that great men, are men of great
leisure. They see them much in public, much ap-
plauded, and greatly followed. How disgusting in con-
trast is the mechanic's life ; a tinkering shop, — dark
and smutty — is the only theatre of his exploits ; and
labor, which covers him with sweat and fills him with
weariness, brings neither notice nor praise. The ambi-
tious apprentice, sighing over his soiled hands, hates his
ignoble work ; — neglecting it, he aspires to better things,
— plots in a caucus ; declaims in a bar-room ; fights in
a grogshop ; and dies in a ditch.

5. But the Indolence begotten by venal ambition must
not be so easily dropped. At those periods of occasional
disaster w^hen embarrassments cloud the face of com-
merce, and trade drags heavily, sturdy laborers forsake
industrial occupations, and petition for office. Had I a
son able to gain a livelihood by toil, I had rather bury
him, than witness his beggarly supplications for office ; —
sneaking along the path of men's passions to gain his
advantage ; holding in the breath of his honest opinions ;
and breathing feigned words of flattery to hungry ears,
popular or official ; and crawling, viler than a snake,
through all the unmanly courses by which ignoble
wretches purloin the votes of the dishonest, the drun-
ken, and the vile.

The late reverses of commerce have unsettled the
habits of thousands. Manhood seems debilitated, and
sturdy yeomen are ashamed of nothing but labor. For

IDLENESS. 29

a farthing-pittance of official salary — for the miserable
fees of a constable's office, — for the parings and perqui-
sites of any deputy ship, a hundred men in every village,
rush forward — scrambling, jostling, crowding, — each
more obsequious than the other to lick the hand that
holds the omnipotent vote, or the starveling office. The
most supple cunning gains the prize. Of the disap-
pointed crowd, a few, rebuked by their sober reflections,
go back to their' honest trade, — ashamed and cured of
office-seeking. But the majority grumble for a day,
then prick forth their ears, arrange their feline arts, and
mouse again for another office. The general appetite
for office and disrelish for industi-ial callings, is a prolific
source of Idleness ; and it would be well for the honor
of young men if they were bred to regard office as fit
only for those who have clearly shown themselves able
and willing to support their families without it. No
office can make a worthless man respectable ; and a
man of integrity, thrift, and religion, has name enough
without badge or office.

6. Men become Indolent through the reverses of for-
tune. Surely, despondency is a grievous thing, and a
heavy load to bear. To see disaster and wreck in the
present, and no light in the future ; but only storms, lurid
by the contrast of past prosperity, and growing darker as
they advance ; — to wear a constant expectation of wo
like a girdle ; to see want at the door, imperiously
knocking, while there is no strength to repel, or courage
to bear its tyranny; — indeed, this is dreadful enough.
But there is a thing more dreadful. It is more dreadful
if the man is wrecked with his fortune. Can any thing
be more poignant in anticipation, than one's ownself,
3*

30 INDUSTRYANDIDLENESS.

unnerved, cowed down and slackened to utter pliancy,
and helplessly drifting and driven down the troubled sea
of life ? Of all things on earth, next to his God, a bro-
ken man should cling to a courageous Industry. If it
brings nothing back, and saves nothing, it will save him.
To be pressed down by adversity has nothing in it of
disgrace ; but it is disgraceful to lie down under it like a
supple dog. Indeed, to stand composedly in the storm,
amidst its rage and wildest devastations ; to let it beat
over you, and roar around you, and pass by you, and
leave you undismayed, — this is to be a man. Adversity
is the mint in which God stamps upon us his image and
superscription. In this matter man may learn of in-
sects. The ant will repair his dwelling as often as the
mischievous foot crushes it ; the spider will exhaust life
itself, before he will live without a web ; — the bee can
be decoyed from his labor neither by plenty nor scar-
city. If summer be abundant it toils none the less ; if
it be parsimonious of flowers, the tiny laborer sweeps
a wider circle, and by Industry, repairs the frugality of
the season. Man should be ashamed to be rebuked in
vain by the spider, the ant, and the bee.

Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand
Iw.fore kings, he shall not stand before ?nean men.

LECTURE II.

Providing for honest' things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but
also in the sight of men. 2 Cor. viii. 21.

Only extraordinary circumstances can give the ap-
pearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usually, not
to seem honest, is not to he so. The quality must not
be doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and
day and taking hues from both ; it must be day light,
clear, and eflulgent. This is the doctrine of the Bible :
Providing for honest things^ not only in the sight of the
Lord, BUT ALSO IN THE SIGHT OF MEN. If the needle
traverses in the compass, you may be sure something
has attracted it ; and so good men's opinions will
point steadily to an honest man, nor vibrate without
a cause. In general it may be said that no one has
honesty without dross, until he has honesty without
suspicion.

We are passing through times upon which the seeds
of dishonesty have been sown broadcast, and they have
brought forth a hundred fold. These times will pass
away : but like ones will come again. As physicians
study the causes and record the phenomena of plagues
and pestilences, to draw from them an antidote against

32 TWELVE CAUSES

their recurrence, so should we leave to another genera-
tion a history of moral plagues, as the best antidote to
their recurring malignity.

Upon a land, — capacious beyond measure, whose pro-
digal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abun-
dance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signal-
ized by enterprise and industry, — there came a summer
of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so
brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come.
Each day grew brighter. No reins were put upon the
imagination. Its dreams passed for realities. Even
sober men, touched with wildness, seemed to expect
a realization of oriental tales. Upon this bright day
came sudden frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke
from gorgeous dreams in the midst of desolation. The
liarvests of years were swept away in a day. The
strongest firms were rent as easily as the oak by light-
ning. Speculating companies were dispersed as seared
leaves from a tree in autumn. Merchants were ruined
by thousands; clerks turned adrift by ten thousands.
Mechanics were left in idleness. Farmers sighed over
flocks and wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. The
wide sea of Commerce was stagnant ; upon the realm of
Industry settled down a sullen lethargy.

Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of
dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass — or wolves
and hyenas from a battle-ground. Banks were explo-
ded,— or robbed, — or fleeced by astounding forgeries.
Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces,
and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that
came ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of vil-
lains. The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like mines

OF DISHONESTY. 33

on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next
explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed
toJiave forsaken men. Many that had earned a reputa-
tion for sterling honesty were cast so suddenly headlong
into wickedness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion
overgrew confidence, and the heart bristled with the
nettles and thorns of fear and jealousy. Then had al-
most come to pass the divine delineation of ancient
wickedness : The good man is perished out of the earth :
and there is none upright a?nong men : they all lie in wait
for blood ; they hunt every man his brother with a net.
That they may do evil ivith both hands earnestly, the
prince and the judge ask for a reward : and the great
man uttereth his mischievous desire : so they wrap it up.
The best of them is a brier ; the inost upright is sharper
than a thorn hedge. * * * Trust ye not in a friend ;
put ye no confidence iii a guide; keep the door of thy
mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dis-
honoreth the father, the daughter riseth up against her
mother. * * * ^ mail's enemies are the men of his
own house."- The world looked upon a continent of in-
exhaustible fertility, (whose harvests had glutted the
markets, and rotted in disuse) — filled with lamentation,
and its inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens
among the ruins of an earthquake, mourning for chil-
dren, for houses crushed, and property buried forever.

That no measure might be put to the calamit}', the
Church of God, which rises a stately tower of refuge to
disponding men, seemed now to have lost its power of
protection. When the solemn voice of Religion should
have gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man

a Micah. vii. 2—6.

34 TWELVE CAUSES

to seek in him their strength ; in this time when Religion
should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame
to walk, and bound up the broken hearted, she was
herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came
the noise of warring sects ; some contending against
others with a warfare disgraceful to pirates ; and some,
possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foam-
ing and rending themselves. In a time of panic, and
disaster, and distress, and crime, the fountain which
should have been for the healing of men, cast up its sedi-
ments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollution.

In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the
clamor of contention, and cooled the heats of parties ;
but the greatness of our national calamity seemed only
to enkindle the fury of political parties. Contentions
never ran with such deep streams and impetuous cur-
rents, as amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity.
States were greater debtors to foreign nations, than
their citizens were to each other. Both states and citi-
zens shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dis-
honestly from the taxes necessary to discharge them.
The General Government did not escape, but lay be-
calmed, or pursued its course, like a ship, at every furlong
touching the rocks, or beating against the sands. The
Capitol trembled with the first waves of a question
which is yet to shake the whole land. New questions
of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legislation,
and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest
decline of family government ; an increase of the ratio
of popular ignorance ; a decrease of reverence for law,
and an effeminate administration of it. Popular tumults
have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers ; and like

OF PIS HONES XT. 35

them, have swept over tlie land with desolation and
left their filthy slime in the highest places :— upon the
press ; — upon the legislature ; — in the halls of our
courts ; — and even upon the sacred bench of Justice.
If unsettled times foster dishonesty, it should have
flourished among us. And it has.

Our nation must expect a periodical return of such
convulsions ; but experience should steadily curtail their
ravages, and remedy their immoral tendencies. Young
men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught
by the severest of masters — experience. They should
be studied ; and that they may be, I shall, from this gen-
eral survey, turn to a specific enumeration of the causes
of dishonesty.

1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a
vehement inclination to dishonest ways. Knavish pro-
pensities are inherent: born with the child and trans-
missible from parent to son. The children of a sturdy
thief, if taken from him at birth and reared by honest
men, would, doubtless, have to contend against a strongly
dishonest inclination. Foundlings and orphans under
public charitable charge, are more apt to become vicious
than other children. They are usually born of low and
vicious parents, and inherit their parent's propensities.
Only the most thorough moral training can overrule this
innate depravity.

2. A child naturally fair minded, may become dishon-
est by parental example. He is early taught to be sharp
in bargains, and vigilant for every advantage. Little is
said about honesty, and much upon shrewd trafiic. A
dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote ; visiters are
regaled with the boy's precocious keenness. Hearing

36 T W E L V E C A U S E S

the praise of his exploits, he studies craft, and seeks pa-
rental admiration by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for
his safety, that he must not range beyond the law : that
would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality thus :
Legal honesty is the best policy, — dishonesty, then, is a bad
bargain — and therefore wrong — every thing is wrong
which is unthrifty. Whatever profit breaks no legal sta-
tute— though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness, by
gloss ; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupu-
lous conscience — he considers fair, and says : The law
allouis it. Men may spend a long life without an in-
dictable action, and without an honest one. No law
can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law
allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others' mis-
fortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over-
reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the
bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds,
swooping down upon the weak, the straggling, and the
weary. The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the
law itself to piracy, and works outrageous fraud in the
hall of Courts, by the decision of Judges, and under the
seal of Justice.

3. Dishonesty is learned from one's employers. The
boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade,
or a store, where the employer practices legal frauds.
The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter
among the better taught clerks. The master tells them
that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied ; the
boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridi-
culed for what he could not help. At first, it verily
pains the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame
a deliberate dishonesty, finish, and polish it. His tongue

OF DISHONESTY. 37

stammers at a lie ; but the example ol' a rich master,
the jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual practice
cure all this. lie becomes adroit in fleecing customers
tor his masters sake, and equally dextrous in fleecing
his master for his own sake.

4. Extravagance is a prolific source of Dishonesty.
Extravagance, — which is foolish expense, or expense
disproportionate to one's means, — may be found in all
grades of society ; but it is chiefly apparent among the
rich, those aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be
fhought aflluent. Many a young man cheats his busi-
ness, by transferring his means to theatres, race-courses,
expensive parties, and to the nameless and numberless
projects of pleasure. The enterprise of others is
baffled by the extravagance of their family ; for few men
can make as much in a year as an extravagant woman
can carry on her back in one winter. Some are ambi-
tious of fashionable society, and will gratify their vanity
at any expense. This disproportion between means
and expense soon brings on a crisis. Tlie victim is
straitened for money ; without it he must abandon his
rank ; for fashionable society remorselessly rejects all
butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. Which
shall he choose, honesty and mortifying exclusion, or
gaiety purchased by dishonesty ? The severity of this
choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain ; and
a young man shrinks i'rom the gulf, appalled at the dark-
ness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life
with or without fraud, is Paradise ; and any other life
Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a
scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sus-
4

38 TWELVE CAUSES

tains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and
pities the thief of Fashion.

The struggle with others is on the very ground of
honor. A wife led from aflluence to frigid penury and
neglect ; from leisure and luxury to toil and want ; daugh-
ters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when poor
— this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic haze
of despondency. Honor, love and generosity, strangely
bewitched, plead for dishonesty as the only alternative
to such suffering. But go, young man, to your wife ; tell
her the alternative ; if she is worthy of you, she will
face your poverty with u courage which shall shame
your fears, and lead you into its wilderness and through
it, all unshrinking. Many there be who went weeping
into this desert, and ere long, having found in it the
fountains of the purest peace, have thanked God for the
pleasures of poverty. But if your wife unmans your
resolution, nnploring dishonor rather than penury, may
God pity and help you ! You dwell with a sorceress,
and few can resist her wiles.

5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty.
The Royal Preacher tells us : The borrower is servant
to the lender. Debt is a rigorous servitude. The
debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments,
and frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master.
He is tempted to make ambiguous statements ; pledges',
with secrei, passages of escape ; contracts, with fraudu-
lent constructions ; lying excuses, and more mendacious
promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to
delay settlements ; to prevaricate upon the terms ; to
resist equity, and devise specious fraud. When the
the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law.

OF DISHONESTT. 39

the debtor then thinks himself released from moral obliga-
tion, and brought to a legal game, in which it is lawful for
the best player to win. He disputes true accounts ; he
studies subterfuges ; extorts provocations delays ; and
harbors in every nook, and corner, and passage of the
law's labyrinth. At length the measure is filled up, and
the malignant power of debt is known. It has opened
in the heart every fountain of iniquity ; it lias besoiled
the conscience ; it has tarnished the honor ; it has made
the man a deliberate student of knavery; a systematic
practitioner of fraud : it has dragged him through all the
sewers of petty passions, — anger, hate, revenge, mali-
cious folly, or malignant shame. When a debtor is
beaten at every point, and the law will put her screws
upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of dishonesty
into which he will not boldly plunge. Some men put
their property to the flames, assassinate the detested
creditor, and end the frantic tragedy by suicide, or the
gallows. Others, in view of the catastrophe, have con-
verted all property to cash, and concealed it. The
law's utmost skill, and the creditor's fury, are alike pow-
erless now — the tree is green and thrifty ; its roots
drawing a copious supply from some hidden fountain.

Craft lias another harbor of resort for the piratical
crew of dishonesty ; viz. putting property out of the
law's reach hij a fraudulent conveyance. Whoever runs
in debt, and consumes the equivalent of his indebted-
ness ; whoever is fairh' liable to damage for broken con-
tracts; whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost
the benefit of his outlay ; whoever is legally obliged
to pay for his malice or carelessness ; whoever by
infidelity to public trusts, has made his property a just

40 T \\' E L V E C A U S E S

remuneration for his defaults ; whoever of all tiiese,
or whoever, under any circumstances, puts out of his
Iiands property, morally or legally due to creditors, is
A DISHONEST 5IAN. The crazy excuses which men ren-
der to their consciences, are only such as every villain
makes, who is unwilling to look upon the black face of
his crimes.

He who'will receive a conveyance of property, know-
ing it to be illusive and fraudulent, is as wicked as the
principal ; and as much meaner, as the tool and subordi-
nate of villany, is meaner than the master who uses him.

If a church, knowing all these facts, or willfully igno-
rant of them, allows a member to nestle in the security
of the sanctuary ; then the act of this robber, and the
connivance of the church, are but the two parts of one
crime.

0. Bankruptcy, although a branch of debt, deserves a
separate mention. It sometimes crushes a man's spirit,
and sometimes exasperates it. The poignancy of the
evil depends much upon the disposition of the creditors ;
and as much upon the disposition of the victim. Should
they act with the lenity of christian men, and he with
manly honesty, promptly rendering up whatever sat-
isfaction of debt he has, — he may visit the lowest places
of human adversity, and find there the light of good
men's esteem, the support of conscience, and the suste-
nance of religion. The soils which yield gold are rocky
and barren of all else, and those rich in flowers and
fruit, yield no ore ; — and the heart which has only gold,
is barren indeed ; but that poverty is not poor, in which
every affection more sweetly blossoms and matures the
richest fruits of love.

OF DISHONESTY. 41

A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose
tender mercies are cruel ; or his dishonest equivocations
may exasperate their temper and provoke every thorn
and brier of the law. When men's passions are let
loose, especially their avarice, whetted by real or im-
aginary wrong ; when there is a rivalry among credi-
tors, lest any one should feast upon the victim more
than his share ; and they all rush upon him like wolves
upon a wounded deer, dragging him down, ripping him
open, breast and flank, plunging deep their bloody muz-
zles to reach the heart and taste blood at the very
fountain ; — is it strange that resistance is desperate and
unscrupulous ? At length the sufferer drags his muti-
lated carcass aside, every nerve and muscle wrung with
pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. He
curses the whole human crew with envenomed impreca-
tions ; and thenceforth, a brooding misanthrope, he pays
back to society, by studied villanies, the legal wrongs
which the relentless justice of a few, or his own kna-
very, have brought upon him.

7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties practiced
because the law allows them. The very anxiety of law
to reach the devices of cunning, so perplexes its stat-
utes with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that
like a castle gradually enlarged for centuries, it has its
crevices, dark corners, secret holes and winding passa-
ges— an endless harbor for rats and vermin, where no
trap can catch them. We are villanously infested with
legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most
flagrant dishonesties with impunity. They can do all
of wrong which is profitable, without that part which is
actionable. The very ingenuity of these miscreants
4"^

42 TWELVE CAUSES

excites such admiration of their skill, that their life is
gilded with a specious respectability. Men profess lit-
tle esteem for blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and
run away ; but for a gentleman who can break the
whole of God's law so adroitly, as to leave man's law
unbroken ; who can indulge in such conservative steal-
ing that his fellow men award him a rank among honest
men for the excessive skill of his dishonesty — for such
an one, I fear, there is almost universal sympathy.

8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of every
kind. It is possible for good men to permit single sins to
co-exist with general integrity, where the evil is indulg-
ed through ignorance. Once, undoubted christians
were slave-traders. They might be, while unenlight-
ened 5 but not in our times.- A state of mind which
will intend one fraud, will upon occasion, intend a thou-
sand. He that will lie upon one emergency, will be
supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure him-
self to save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture,
to save himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us
that He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much.
Circumstances may withdraw a politician from tempta-
tion to any but political dishonesty ; but under tempta-
tion, a dishonest politician would be a dishonest cashier,
— would be dishonest any where, — in any thing. The
fire which burns on tiie hearth, would consume the
dwelling if permitted. The fury which destroys an
opponent's character, would stop at nothing, if barriers
were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders
in politics, is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty
in voters runs into general dishonesty, as the rotten
speck taints the whole apple. A community whose

OF DISHONESTY. 43

politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty
on both sides, will be tainted by immorality throughout.
Men will play the same game in their private affairs,
which they have learned to play in public matters.
The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage,
the cunning sharpness ; — the tricks and traps and sly
evasions ; the equivocal promises, and unequivocal neg-
lect of them, which characterise political action, will
equally characterise private action. The mind has no
kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains
clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere ; if it comes into
one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Who-
ever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will
slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles.
A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is
a dishonest christian. His creed is a perpetual index of
his hypocrisy.

The genius of our government directs the attention
of every citizen to politics. Its spirit reaches the outer-
most bound of society, and pervades the whole mass.
If its channels are slimy with corruption, what limit
can be set to its malign influence ? The turbulence of
elections, the virulence of the press, the desperation of
bad men, the hopelessness of efforts which are not cun-
ning, but only honest, have driven many conscientious
men from any concern with politics. This is suicidal.
Thus the tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our
youth will be caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed
to pieces, and its hail will break down every green thing.
At God's house the cure should begin. Let the hand of
discipline smite the leprous lips which shall utter the
profane heresy : All is fair in politics. If any hoary

44 T W E L V E C A U S E S

professor, drunk with tlie mingled wine of excitement,
shall tell our youth, that a christian man may act in
politics by any other rule of morality than that of the
Bible ; and that wickedness performed for a party, is not
as abominable, as if done for a man ; or that any ne-
cessity justifies or palliates dishonesty in word or deed
— let such an one go out of the camp, and his pestilent
breath no longer spread contagion among our youth.
No man who loves his country, should shrink from her
side when she groans with raging distempers. Let
every christian man stand in his place ; rebuke every
dishonest practice ; scorn a political as well as a perso-
nal lie ; and refuse with indignation to be insulted by the
solicitation of an immoral man. Let good men of all
parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality
in politics, and there, as powerfully as any where else,
the requisitions of public sentiuient will ultimately be
felt.

9. A corrupt public sentiment produces Dishonesty.
A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgrace-
ful ; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are
honored, are exalted — is a curse to the young. The
fever of speculation, the universal derangement of busi-
ness, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming
extent, introducing such a state of things. Men of noto-
rious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose
private habits w'ould disgrace the ditch, are powerful
and popular. I have seen a man stained with every
sin, except those which required courage ; into whose
head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty
years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would find
itself alone in a desert; — in evil he was ripe and rotten ;

OF DISHONESTY. 45

hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present Hte
and in all his past ; evil when by himself, and viler
among men ; corrupting to the young ; — to domestic
fidelity, a recreant ; to common honor, a traitor ; to
honesty, an outlaw ; to religion, a hypocrite ; to mod-
esty, a beast ; — base in all that is worthy of man, and
accomplished in whatever is disgraceful ; and yet this
wretch could go where he would ; enter good men's
dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men would curse
him, yet obey him ; hate him, and assist him ; warn
their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for
him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious
knaves, cannot breed honest men.

Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks
tlie administration of justice between man and man, is
ruinous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of busi-
ness cover the ground with rubbish over which men
stumble ; and fill the air with dust, in which all the shapes
of honesty appear distorted. Men are thrown upon
unusual expedients ; dishonesties are unobserved ; those
who have been reckless and profuse, stave off the legiti-
mate fruits of their folly by desperate shifts. Society
resembles a city sacked by an army, in which each man
seizes what opportunity allows, and carries off what his
strength will permit. We have not yet emerged from
a period, in which debts were insecure ; the debtor
legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes
laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political
effect ; and lowered to a dishonest insufficiency ; and
when thus diminished, not collected 5 the citizens resist-
ing their own officers ; officers resigning at the bidding of
the electors 5 the laws of property paralyzed ; bankrupt

46 TWELVE CAUSES

laws built up ; and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted,
upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to
deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion should
roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to dispoil its dig-
nity, and prostrate its power. General suffering has
made us tolerant of general dishonesty ; and the gloom
of our commercial disasters threatens to become the pall
of our morals.

If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atro-
cious dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men do
not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul
sorcery ; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tight-
ened, and conscience intoned to a severer morality, our
night is at hand, — our midnight not far off. Wo ! to
that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and
wealth saved by injustice ! Wo ! to a generation fed
upon the bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance
shall be a perpetual memento of their fathers' unright-
eousness ; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant
by association W'ith the revered memories of father,
brother, and friend !

But when a whole people united by a common disre-
gard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors ;
and States vie with Slates in an infamous repudiation of
just debts, by open or sinister methods ; and Nations
exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the kna-
very of a Commonwealth ; then the confusion of do-
mestic affairs has bred a fiend, before whose flight honor
fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth
and the religion of solemn compacts, are stamped down
and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the causes of
growing dishonesty among the young, and the increas-

O F D I S H O N E .S T Y . 47

ing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen
clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and Nations put
on fraud for their garments ?

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalca-
tions, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at
length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common
accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week
is incomplete without its mob and run-away cashier —
its duel and defaulter ; and as waves which roll to the
shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villanies
of each week, obliterate the record of the last.

This mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local
causes ; it is the result of disease in the whole commu-
nity : an eruption betokening foulness of the blood ;
blotches symptomatic of a disordered system.

10. Financial agents are especially liable to the temp-
tations of Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and visionary
schemers ; sagacious adventurers, and rash speculators ;
frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, are constantly
around them. Every word, every act, every entry,
every letter, suggests only wealth — its germ, its bud,
its blossom, its golden harvest. Its brilliance dazzles the
sight ; its seductions stir the appetites ; its power fires
the ambition, and the soul concentrates its energies to
obtain wealth, as life's highest and only joy.

Beside the influence of such associations, direct deal-
ing in money as a commodity, has a peculiar efl^ect upon
the heart. There is no property between it and the
n\ind ; — no medium to mellow its light. The mind is
diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality
of soils ; the durability of structures ; the advantages of
sites ; the beauty of fabrics ; it is not invigorated by

48 T ^V E L V E C A U S E S

the necessity of labor and ingenuity which the mechanic
feels ; by the invention of the artizan, or the taste of the
artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked
Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, and
sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an intense regard of
riches, steals in also the miser's relish of coin — that insa-
tiate gazing and fondling, by which seductive metal
wins to itself all the blandishments of love.

Those who mean to be rich, often begin by imitating
the expensive courses of those who are rich. They are
also tempted to venture, before they have means of their
own, in brilliant speculations, which open as blandly as
spring — with as many germs, and the promise of a
prodigal harvest. ITow can a young cashier pay the
drafts of his illicit pleasures, or procure the seed, for the
harvest of speculation, out of his narrow salary ? Here
first begins to work the leaven of death. The mind
wanders in dreams of gain ; it broods over projects of
unlawful riches ; stealthily at first, and then with less
reserve ; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of
being dishonest and safe. When a man can seriously
reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and profitable
thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so
tainted, (as vultures to a carcass) flock stories of con-
summate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered
by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from
its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy
cliff on whose edge they poise, or over which they fling
themselves like sporting sea-birds. But these imagina-
tions will not be driven from the heart where they have
once nested. They haunt a man's business, visit him in
dreams, and vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim

OF DISHONESTY. 49

whom they will destroy. In some teverish hour, vibra-
ting between conscience and avarice, the man staggers to
a compromise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to
steal ; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows the funds ; —
not openly — not of owners — not of men ; but of the
till — the safe — the vault !

He resolves to restore the money before discovery can
ensue, and pocket the profits. Meanwhile, false entries
are made, perjured oaths are sworn, forged papers are
filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder
from what fountain so copious a stream can flow.

Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flour-
ishes, is called prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he safe,
or honest ? He has stolen, and embarked the amount
upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms ; where
wreck is the common fate, and escape the accident ;
and now all his chance for the semblance of honesty,
is staked upon the return of his embezzlements from
among the sands, the rocks, and currents, the winds
and waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At
length dawns the day of discovery. His guilty dreams
have long betokened it. As he confronts the disgrace
almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect
of his deed, from that fair face of promise with which it
tempted him ! Conscience, and honor, and plain hon-
esty, which left him when they could not restrain, now
come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the
prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his
children's beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of
life a frantic suicide.

Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They
meet their fate with cool impudence ; defy their em-
5

50 T W E L V K C A U S E S

ployers ; brave the court, and too often with success.
The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of
aflairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled
into prison, a cool, calculating, and immense scoundrel
is pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing commu^
nity. In the broad road slanting to the rogue's retreat,
are seen the officer of the bank, the agent of the state,
the officer of the church, in indiscriminate haste, out-
running a lazy justice, and bearing off the gains of as-
tounding frauds. Meanwhile, the victim of these villa-
nies, the good-natured public, as if bled to weakness,
feebly asks with complacent smiles: "How speeds the
race?" Avarice and pleasure seem to have dissolved
the conscience. It is a day of trouble and of perplexity
from the Lord. We tremble to think that our children
must leave the covert of the family, and go out upon
that dark and yesty sea, from whose wrath so many
wrecks are cast up at our feet. Of one thing I am cer-
tain ; if the church of Christ is silent to such deeds, and
makes her altar a refuge to such dishonesty, the day is
coming when she shall have no altar, the light shall go
out from her candle-stick, her walls shall be desolate,
and the fox look out at her windows.

11. Executive clemency, by its frequency, has been a
temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a cul-
prit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, and
the prelude of pardon ? What can the community ex-
pect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at ac-
quittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon ;
when honest men and officers fly before a mob ; when
jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not relin-
quished ; when the Executive, consulting the spirit of

OF DISHONESTY

the community, receives the demands of the mob, and
humbly complies, throwing down the fences of the law,
that base rioters may walk unimpeded to their work of
vengeance, or unjust mercy? A sickly sentimentality too
often enervates the administration of justice ; and the
pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out
unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced
us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic ;
yet our heart turns to water over their merited punish-
ment. A fine young fellow, by accident, writes another's
name for his own ; by a mistake equally unfortunate, he
presents it at the bank ; innocendy draws out the large
amount ; generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly
hides the rest. Hard-hearted wretches there are, who
would punish him for this ! Young men, admiring the
neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and curse a
stupid jury that knew no better than to send to a peni-
tentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashier-ship. He
goes to his cell, the pity of a whole metropolis. Bulle-
tins from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards is
doing, as if he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length
pardoned, he will go forth again to a renowned liberty !

If there be one way quicker than another, by which
the Executive shall assist crime, and our laws foster it,
it is that course which assures every dishonest man, that
it is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest, easy to escape
punishment, and easiest of all to obtain a pardon.

12. CoMMKRciAL SPECULATIONS are prolific of Dishonesty.
Speculation is the risking of capital in enterprises greater
than we can control, or in enterprises whose elements
are not at all calculable. All calculations of the
future are uncertain ; but those w^hich are based upon

52 TWELVE CAUSES

long experience approximate certainly, while those which
are drawn by sagacity from probable events, are noto-
riously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, we
shall forever tread an old and dull path ; therefore en-
terprise is allowed to pioneer new ways. The safe en-
terpriser explores cautiously, ventures at first a little,
and increases the venture with the ratio of experience.
A speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a
far-away land-scape, whose features are softened to
beauty by distance ; upon a hope., he stakes that, which,
if it wins, will make him ; and if it loses, will ruin him.
When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a
battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. But com-
merce has no such alternatives ; only speculation pro-
ceeds upon them.

If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such
ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow
a noble steed and ride among incitements which he knew
would rouse up his fiery spirit to an uncontrolable height,
and, borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a
precipice, his destruction might excite our pity, but
could not alter our opinion of his dishonesty. He bor-
rowed property, and endangered it where he knew that it
would be uncontrolable. Sanguine to a seeming certain-
ty, he staked, and lost anothers' property, upon a Hope.

If the capital be one's own, it can scarcely be risked
and lost, without the ruin of other men. No man could
blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only
his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric,
woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a com-
mon fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to
cut ofT my hand ; I defraud myself, my family, the com-

OF DISiiONKSTY. 53

inunity, and God ; for all these have an interest in that
hand. Neither has a man the right to throw away his
property. He defrauds himself, his family, the commu-
nity in which he dwells ; for all these have an interest in
that property. If waste is dishonesty, then every risk,
in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. It would
be a high crime for a General, heedlessly, to hazard his
whole army. Money is soldiery, — its owner the General ;
his forces are not to be risked, needlessly, in engage-
ments beyond his control or calculation. To venture,
without that foresight which experience gives, is wrong ;
and if we cannot foresee, then we must not venture.

Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and al-
most necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his own
interests to rash ventures, will scarcely do better for
others. The Speculator regards the weightiest affairs as
only a splendid game. Indeed, a Speculator on the ex-
change, and a Gambler at his table, follow one vocation,
only with different instruments. One employs cards or
dice, the other property. The one can no more foresee
the result of his schemes, than the other what spots will
come up on his dice ; the calculations of both are onlv
the chances of luck. Both burn with unhealthy excite-
ment ; both are avaricious of gains, but careless of what
they win ; both depend more upon fortune than skill ;
they have a common distaste for labor ; with each, right
and wrong are only the accidents of a game ; neither
would scruple in any hour to set his whole being on the
edge of ruin, and going over, to pull down, if possible,
a hundred others.

The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunk-
ard's appetite, and a fiend's desperation. The revulsion
5*

54 TWELVE CAUSES

from extravagant hopes, to a certainty of midnight dark-
ness ; the sensations of poverty, to him who was in
fancy just stepping upon a princely estate ; the humilia-
tion of gleaning for cents, wiiere he has been profuse of
thousands ; the chagrin of seeing old competitors now
above him, grinning down upon his poverty a malig-
nant triumph ; the pity of pitiful men, and the neglect
of such as should have been his friends, — and who were,
W'hile the sunshine lay upon his path — all these things,
like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that
it cannot rest in the cheerless trancjuility of honesty,
but casts up mire a7id dirt. They who meant to soar
above all men, and by wide flights to compass imperial
{)ossessions, at last, bereft of wings, and unable to walk —
crawl. How stately the balloon rises and sails over con-
tinents, as over petty landscapes ! The slightest slit in
its frail covering, sends it tumbling down, swaying wild-
ly, whirling and pitching hither and thither, until it
plunges into some dark glen, out of the path of honest
men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So
have we seen a thousand men pitched down ; — so now,
in a thousand places may their wrecks be seen. But
still other balloons are framing, and the air is full of vic-
tim-venturers.

If our young men are introduced to life with distaste
for safe ways, because the sure profits are slow ; if the
opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great,
only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and
the romantic ; then we may stay our hand at once, nor
waste labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had
as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles ; or teach
decency to vultures upon a carcass ; or cleanliness to

•OF IMSHONESTY. 55

liyenas foul with human corpses, as to urge Iionesty and
integrity upon those who have detennined to be rich, and
to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's ventures.

All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless com-
pared with a bankruptcy of public morals. Should the
Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and roll sheer
across lo the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of culti-
vation, and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy,
compared to that ocean-deluge of dishonesty and crime,
which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared our
wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields and
vineyards, what are stores and manufactures, and what
are gold and silver, and all the precious commodities of
the earth, among beasts ? — and what are men, bereft of
conscience and honor, but beasts ?

We will forget those things which are behind, and
hope a more cheerful future. We turn to you, young
MEN ! — All good men, all patriots, turn to watch your
advance upon the stage, and to implore you to be wor-
thy of yourselves, and of your revered ancestry. Oh !
ye favored of Heaven ! with a free land, a noble inheri-
tance of wise laws, and a prodigality of w^ealth in pros-
pect,— advance to your possessions! — May you settle
down, as did Israel of old, a people of God in a promised
and protected land ; — true to yourselves, true to your
country, and true to your God.

LECTURE III.

The generation of the upright shall be blessed, wealth and riches shall

be in his house. Ps. cxii, 2, 3.
He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst

of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. Jer. xvii. 11.

When justly obtained, and rationally used, riches are
called a gift of God, an evidence of his favor, and a great
reward. When gathered unjustly, and corruptly used,
wealth is pronounced a canker, a rust, a fire, a curse.
There is no contradiction, then, when the Bible per-
suades to industry, obedience, and integrity, by a pro-
mise of riches ; and then dissuades from wealth, as a
terrible thing, destroying soul and body. The bee has
honey for its friends, and a sting for its enemies. Bless-
ings are vindictive to abusers, and kind to rightful users;
— they serve us, or rule us. Fire warms our dvi^elling,
or consumes it. Steam serves man, and also destroys
him. Iron, in the plough, the sickle, the house, the ship,
is indispensable. The dirk, the assassin's knife, the cruel
sword and the spear, are iron also.

The constitution of man, and of society, alike evinces
the design of God. Both are made to be happier
by the possession of riches ; — their full development

58 S I X \\' A R X I N G S .

and perfection are dependent, to a large extent, upon
wealth. Without it, there can be neither books nor
implements ; neither commerce nor arts, neither towns
nor cities. It is a folly to denounce that, a love
of which God has placed in man by a constitutional
faculty ; that, with which he has associated high grades
of happiness ; that, which has motives touching every
faculty of the mind. Wealth is an artist : by its patro-
nage men are encouraged to paint, to carve, to design,
to build and adorn ; — A master-mechanic : and inspires
man to invent, discover, to apply, to forge and fashion : —
A husbandman : and under its influence men rear the
flock, till the earth, plant the vineyard, the field, the orch-
ard, and the garden : — A manufacturer : and teache>
men to card, to spin, to weave, to color and dress all
useful fabrics : — A merchant : and sends forth ships, and
fills ware-houses with their returning cargos, gath-
ered from every zone. It is the scholar's patron ; sus-
tains his leisure, rewards his labor, builds the college,
and gathers the library.

Is a man weak ? — he can buy the strong. Is he igno-
rant ? — the learned will serve his wealth. Is he rude of
speech? — he may procure the advocacy of the eloquent.
The rich cannot buy honor, but honorable places they
can ; they cannot purchase nobility, but they may its
titles. Money cannot buy freshness of heart, but it can
every luxury which tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its
body-guard, and no earthly power may safely defy it ;
either while running in the swift channels of commerce,
or reposing in the reservoirs of ancient families. Here
is a wonderful thing, that an inert metal, which neither
thinks, nor feels, nor stirs, can set the whole world

SIX WARNINGS. 59

to thinking, planning, running, digging, fashioning, and
drives on the sweaty mass with never-ending labors !

Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy therewith ;
not to clothe or feed itself; not to make it an instrument
of wisdom, of skill, of friendship, or religion. Avarice
seeks it to heap it up ; to walk around the pile, and gloat
upon it ; to fondle, and court, to kiss and hug the darling
stuff" to the end of life, with the homage of beastly idol-
atry.

Pride seeks it; — for it gives power, and place, and
titles, and exalts its possessor above his fellows. To be
a thread in the fabric of life, just like any other thread,
hoisted up and down by the treddle, played across by
the shuttle, and woven tightly into the piece, — this may
suit humility, but not pride.

Vanity seeks it ; — what else can give it costly clothing,
and rare ornaments, and stately dwellings, and showy
equipage, and attract admiring eyes to its gaudy colors
and costly jewels ?

Taste seeks it ; — because by it, may be had whatever
is beautiful, or refining, or instructive. What leisure has
poverty for study, and how can it collect books, manu-
scripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curiosities ?

Love seeks it ; — to build a home full of delights for
lather, wife or child ; and wisest of all.

Religion seeks it ; — to make it the messenger and ser-
vant of benevolence, to want, to suffering, and to igno-
rance.

What a sight does the busy world present, as of a
great workshop, where hope and fear, love and pride,
and lust, and pleasure, and avarice, separate or in part-
nership, drive on the universal race for wealth : delving

60 SIX WARNINGS.

in the mine, digging in the earth, sweltering at the forge,
plying the shuttle, ploughing the waters ; in houses, in
shops, in stores, on the mountain-side, or in the valley :
by skill, by labor, by thought, by craft, by force, by
traffic ; all men, in all places, by all labors, fair and un-
fair, the world around, busy, busy ; ever searching for
wealth, that wealth may supply their pleasures.

As every taste and inclination may receive its grati-
fication through riches, the universal and often fierce
pursuit of it arises, not from the single impulse of ava-
rice, but from the impulse of the whole mind ; and on
this very account, its pursuit should be more exactly
regulated. The ship which cannot resist the gale, must
be skillfully steered before it. The helm may be deserted
in a calm, but never in a storm. Let me set up a warn-
ing over against the special dangers which lie along the

ROAD TO RICHES.

I. I warn you against thinking that riches necessa-
rily confers happiness ; and poverty, unhappiness. Do
not begin life supposing that you shall be heart-rich,
when you are purse-rich. A man's happiness depends
primarily upon his disposition ; if that be good, riches
will bring pleasure ; but only vexation, if that be evil.
To lavish money upon shining trifles, to make an idol of
one's self for fools to gaze at, to rear mansions beyond
our w^ants, to garnish them for display and not for use,
to grin and chatter through the heartless rounds of plea-
sure, to lounge, to gape, to simper and giggle : — can
wealth make vanity happy by such folly ? If wealth
descends upon avarick, does it confer happiness ? It
blights the heart, as autumnal fires ravage the prairies !
The eye glows with greedy cunning, conscience shrivels.

SIXAVARNINGS. 61

the light of love goes out, and the wretch moves amidst his
coin no better, no happier than a loathsome toad hop-
ping in a mine of gold. A dreary fire of self-love burns
in the bosom of the avaricious rich, as a hermit's flame
in a ruined temple of the desert. The fire is kindled for
no deity, and is odorous with no incense, but only warms
the shivering anchorite.

Wealth will do little for lust, but to hasten its cor-
ruption. There is no more happiness in a foul heart,
than there is health in a pestilent morass. Satisfaction
is not made out of such stuff as fighting carousals, ob-
scene revelry, and midnight beastliness. An alligator,
gorging or swoln with surfeit and basking in the sun,
has the same happiness which riches bring to the human
brute, who eats to gluttony, drinks to drunkenness, and
sleeps to stupidity. But riches indeed bless that heart
whose almoner is benevolence. If the taste is refined, if
the affections are pure, if conscience is honest, if charity
listens to the needy, and generosity relieves them, if
the public-spirited hand fosters all that embellishes and
all that ennobles society — then is the rich man happy.

On the other hand, do not suppose that poverty is a
waste and howling wilderness. There is a poverty of
vice — mean, loathsome, covered with all the sores of
depravity. There is a poverty of indolence — where
virtues sleep, and passions fret and bicker. There is a
poverty which despondency makes — a deep dungeon, in
which the victim wears hopeless chains. — May God save
you from that ! There is a spiteful and venomous pov-
erty, in which mean and cankered hearts, repairing none
of their own losses, spit at others' prosperity, and curse
the rich, — themselves doubly cursed by their own hearts.
6

(32 SIX WARNINGS.

But there is a contented poverty in which industry
and peace rule ; and a joyful hope, which looks out into
another world where riches shall neither fly nor fade.
This poverty may possess an independent mind, a heart
ambitious of usefulness, a hand quick to sow the seed
of other men's happiness, and find its own joy in
their enjoyment. If a serene age finds you in such
])overty, it is such a wilderness, if it be a wilderness, as
that invvhich God led his chosen people, and on which
he rained every day a heavenly manna.

If God open to your feet the way to wealth, enter
it cheerfully; but remember that riches will bless or
curse you, as your own heart determines. But if cir-
cumscribed by necessity, you are still indigent, after all
your industry, do not scorn poverty. There is often in
the hut, more dignity than in the palace ; more satisfac-
tion in the poor man's scanty fare, than in the rich man's
satiety.

II. Men are warned in the Bible against making haste
TO BE RICH. He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye,
and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.^''
This is spoken, not of the alacrity of enterprise, but of
the precipitancy of avarice. That is an evil eye which
leads a man into trouble by incorrect vision. When a
man seeks to prosper by crafty tricks instead of careful
industry ; when a man's inordinate covetousness pushes
him across all lines of honesty that he may sooner clutch
the prize ; when gambling speculation would reap where
it had not strewn ; when men gain riches by crimes —
there is an evil eye, which guides them through a spe-
cious prosperity, to inevitable ruin. So dependent is

a Prov. xxviii. 22.

S I X AV A RNl N GS. 63

success upon patient Industry, that he who seeks it
otherwise, tempts his own ruin. A young lawyer, un-
willing to wait fur that practice which rewards a good
reputation, or unwilling to earn that reputation by se-
vere application, rushes through all the dirty paths of chi-
cane to a hasty prosperity ; and he rushes out of it, by the
dirtier paths of discovered villany. A young politician,
scarcely waiting till the law allows his majority, sturdily
begs for that popularity which he should have patiently
earned. In the ferocious conflicts of political life, cun-
ning, intrigue, falsehood, slander, vituperative violence, at
first sustain his pretensions, and at last demolish them.
It is thus in all the ways of traffic, in all the arts, and
trades. That prosperity which grows like the mush-
room, is as poisonous as the mushroom. Few men are
destroyed ; many destroy themselves. He whose haste
sends him a-cross-lots for riches, takes the direct road to
inflimy, bankruptcy, the poor-house, the jail, and the
gallows.

When God sends wealth to bless men, he sends it
gradually like a gentle rain. When God sends riches
to punish, men, they come tumultuously, like a roar-
ing torrent, tearing up landmarks and sweeping all be-
fore them in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil which
environs the path to wealth, springs from that criminal
haste which substitutes adroitness for industry, and
trick for toil.

III. Let me warn you against covetousnes.^. Thou

shall not covet., is the law by v/hich God sought to bless

a favorite people. Covetousness is greediness of money.

The Bible meets it by significant icoes^^a by God's hatred, f^

a Hah. n. 9. b Ps. x. 3.

64 SIX WARNINGS.

by solemn iva7-Jiings,<i by denunciations,!^ by exclusion
fro7n Heaven.'^ This pecuniary gluttony comes upon
the competitors for wealth insidiously. At first, busi-
ness is only a means of paying for our pleasures.
Vanity soon whets the appetite for money, to sustain
her parade and competition, to gratify her piques and
jealousies. Pride throws in fuel for a brighter flame.
Vindictive hatreds often augment the passion, until the
whole soul glows as a fervid furnace, and the body is
driven as a boat whose ponderous engine trembles with
the utmost energy of steam.

Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats its own pur-
poses. It breeds restless daring, where it is dangerous to
venture. It works the mind to fever, so that its judg-
ments are not cool, nor its calculations cahu. Greed
of money is like fire ; the more fuel it has, the hotter it
burns. Every thing conspires to intensify the heat.
Loss excites by desperation, and gain by exhilaration.
When there is fever in the blood, there is fire on the
brain ; and courage turns to rashness, and rashness runs
to ruin.

Covetousness breeds misery. The sight of houses
better than our own, of dress beyond our means, of
jewels costlier than we may wear, of stately equipage,
and rare curiosities beyond our reach, these hatch the
viper brood of covetous thoughts ; vexing the poor — who
would be rich ; tormenting the rich — who would be
richer. The covetous man pines to see pleasure ; is
sad in the presence of cheerfulness ; and the joy of the
world is his sorrow, because all the happiness of others

a Luke xii. 15. b 1 Cot. p. 10, 11., Isai. hii. 17. c 1 Cor. vi. 10.

SIX WARNINGS. 65

is not his. I do not wonder that God aiZ/or^a iiim. He
inspects his heart, as he would a cave full of noisome
birds, or a nest of rattling reptiles, and loathes the sight
of its crawling tenants. To the covetous man life is a
nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he
may. Mammon might build its palace on such a heart,
and Pleasure bring all its reveh\y there, and Honor all
its garlands — it would be like pleasure in a sepulchre,
and garlands on a tomb.

The creed of the greedy man is brief and consistent ;
and, unlike other creeds, is both subscribed and believed.
The chief end of man is to glorify gold and enjoy it for-
ever: life is a time afforded man to grow rich in: death,
the winding up of speculations : heaven, a mart with gol-
den streets : hell, a place ivhere shiftless men are punished
with everlasting poverty.

God searched among the beasts, (and took a very
mean one.) for a fit emblem of contempt, to describe the
end of a covetous prince : He shall he buried with the
burial of an Ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates
of Jerusalem.^ He whose heart is turned to greediness,
who sweats through life under the load of labor only
t^ heap up money, and dies without private useful-
ness, or a record of public service, is no better, in God's
estimation, than a pack-horse — a mule — an ass ; a crea-
ture for burdens, to be beaten, and worked and killed,
and dragged off' by another like him, abandoned to the
birds and forgotten.

He is buried with the burial of an ass ! This is
the miser's epitaph — and yours, young man ! if you wish
it, and earn it by covetousness !

a I's. X. 3. b Jer. xxii. 19.

6*

66 SIX WARNINGS.

IV. I warn you against selfishness. Of riches it is
written : There is no good in them hut for a man to re-
joice and do good in his life.a If men absorb their pro-
perty, it parches the heart so that it will not give forth
blossoms and fruits, but only thorns and thistles. If
men radiate and reflect upon others some rays of the
prosperity which shines upon themselves, wealth is
not only harmless, but full of advantage.

The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded by a throng
who iostle,and thrust, and conflict, like men in the tumult
of a battle. The rules which crafty old men breathe
into the ears of the young are full of selfish wisdom ; —
teaching them that the chief end of man is to harvest,
to husband, and to hoard. Their life is made obedient to
a scale of preferences graded from a sordid experience ;
a scale which has penury for one extreme, and parsi-
mony for the other ; and the virtues are ranked between
them as they are relatively fruitful in physical thrift.
Every crevice of the heart is caulked with costive max-
ims, so that no precious drop of wealth may leak out
through inadvertent generosities. Indeed, generosity and
all its company are thought to be little better than pilfer-
ing picklocks, against whose wiles the heart is prepared,
like a coin-vault, with iron-clenched walls of stone, and
impenetrable doors. Mercy, pity, and sympathy, are va-
grant fowls ; and that they may not scale the fence be-
tween a man and his neighbors, their wings are clipped
by the Misers master-maxim — Charity begins at home.
It certainly stays there.

The habit of regarding men ' as dishonest rivals,
dries up, cJso, the kindlier feelings. A shrewd traf-

a Eccl. in. 12

S I X AV A R N I N G S . 67

ficker must watch his fellows, be suspicious of their
proffers, vigilant of their movements, and jealous of
their pledges. The world's way is a very crooked way,
and a very guileful one. Its travellers creep by stealth,
or walk craftily, or glide in concealments, or appear in
specious guises. He who stands out-watching among
men, to pluck his advantage from their hands, or to lose
it by their wiles, comes at length to regard all men os
either enemies or instruments. Of course he thinks it
fair to strip an enemy ; and just as fair to use an instru-
ment. Men are no more to him than bales, boxes, or
goods — mere matters of traffic. If he ever relaxes his
commercial rigidity to indulge in the fictions of poetry, it
is when, perhaps on Sundays or at a funeral, he talks
quite prettily about friendship, and generosity, and phi-
lanthropy. The tightest ship may leak in a storm, and
an unbartered penny may escape from this man, when
the surprise of the solicitation, gives no time for thought.
He is, however, generous : — very generous, very con-
siderate, and very kind, — to himself; but here the
stream sinks and is seen no more.

The heart cannot wholly petrify without some hon-
est revulsions. Opiates are administered to it. This
business-man tells his heart that it is beset by unscrupu-
lous enemies; that beneficent virtues are doors to let
them in ; that liberality is bread given to one's foes ; and
selfishness only self-defence. At the same time, he
enriches the future with generous promises. While
he is getting rich, he cannot afford to be liberal ; but
when once he is rich, ah ! how liberal he means to be !
— as though habits could be unbuckled like a girdle,
and were not rather steel-bands rivetted, defying the

68 S I X AV A R N I N G S .

edge of any man's resolution, and clasping the lieart
with invincible servitude !

Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment.
A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a
citadel stormed in war. The banner of victory waves
over dilapidated walls, desolate chambers, and maga-
zines riddled with artillery. ]Men, covered with sweat,
and begrimmed with toil, expect to find joy in a heart
reduced by selfishness to a smouldering heap of ruins.

I warn every aspirant for wealth against the infernal
canker of selfishness. It will eat out the heart with thr
fire of hell, or bake it harder than a stone. The heart
of avaricious old age stands like a bare rock in a bleak
wilderness, and there is no rod of authority, nor incanta-
tion of pleasure, which can draw from it one chrystal
drop to quench the raging thirst for satisfaction. But
listen not to my w^ords alone ; hear the solemn voice of
God, pronouncing doom upon the selfish : Your riches are
corrupted^ and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold
and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a wit-
ness against you, and shall eat yourjlesh as it were fire. «
y. 1 warn you against seeking wealth by covert
prsHoxESTY. The everlasting plea of petty fraud or open
dishonesty, is, its necessity or profitableness.

It is neither necessary nor profitable. The hope is a
deception, and the excuse a lie. The severity of com-
petition affords no reason for dishonesty in word or
deed. Competition is fair, but not all methods of com-
petition. A mechanic may compete with a mechanic,
by rising earlier, by greater industry, by greater skill,
more punctuality, greater thoroughness, by employing

a James v. 2, 3.

s r X W A R N I N G s . 69

better materials ; by a more scrupulous fidelity to prom-
ises, and by facility in accommodation. A merchant
may study to excel competitors, by a better selection of
goods, by more obliging manners, by more rigid hon-
esty, by a better knowledge of the market, by better
taste in the arrangement of his goods. Industry, hon-
esty, kindness, taste, genius and skill, are the only mate-
rials of all rightful competition.

But whenever you have exerted all your knowledge,
all your skill, all your industry, with long continued pa-
tience and without success, then," it is clear, not that
you may proceed to employ trick and cunning, but that
you must stop ! God has put before you a bound which
no man may overleap. There may be the appearance
of gain on the knavish side of the wall of honor. Traps
arc always baited with food sweet to the taste of the in-
tended victim ; and Satan is too crafty a trapper not to
scatter the pitfall of dishonesty with some shining parti-
cles of gold.

But what if fraud ice7-e necessary to permanent suc-
cess ? will you take success upon such terms ? I per-
ceive, too o(^en, that young men regard the argument as
ended, when they prove to themselves that they cannot
be rich withoul guile. Yery well ; then be poor. But if
you prefer money to honor, you may well swear fidelity
to this villain's law ! If it is not base and detestable to
gain by equivocation, neither is it by lying ; and if not
by lying, neither is it by stealing ; and if not by stealing,
neither by robbery or murder. Will you tolerate the
loss of honor and honesty for the sake of profit? For
exactly this, Judas betrayed Christ, and Arnold his
country. Because it is the only w^ay to gain some plea-

70 SIX WARNINGS.

sure, may a wife yield her lionor ? — a politician sell
himself? — a statesman barter his counsel? — a judge
take bribes? — a juryman forswear himself? — or a wit-
ness commit perjury ? Then virtues are marketable
commodities, and may be hung up, like meat in the sham-
bles, or sold at auction to the highest bidder.

Who can afford a victory gained by a defeat of his
virtue ? What prosperity can compensate the plunder-
ing of a man's heart? A good name is rather to be cliosen
than great riches : (^ sooner or later every man will find
it so.

With what dismay would Esau have sorrowed for a
lost birthright, had he lost also the pitiful mess of pot-
tage for .which he sold it ? With what double despair
would Judas have clutched at death, if he had not ob-
tained even the thirty pieces of silver which were t--
pay his infamy ? And with what utter confusion will all
dishonest men, who were learning of the Devil to de-
fraud other men, find at length, that he was giving his
most finished lesson of deception, — by cheating thei7i!
and making poverty and disgrace the only fruit of the
lies and frauds which were framed for prn^t! Getting
treasure by a hjing tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro
of them that seek death. f*

Men have only looked upon the beginning of a career
when they pronounce upon the profitableness of dis-
honesty. Many a ship goes gaily out of harbor which
never returns again. That only is a good voyage which
brings hoine the richly freighted ship. God explicitly
declares that an inevitable curse of dishonesty shall fall
upon the criminal himself, or upon his children : He that

a Prov. xxii. 1. b Prov. xxi. 6.

S I X -W A K N I N G S . 71

by usury, and tinjust gain, increaselh his substance, he,
shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."' His
children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the
gate. Neither is there any to deliver them: the robber
swalloweth up their substance.^

Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, are permitted
to open bright as the morning ; the most poisonous bud
unfolds with brilliant colors. So the threshold of perdi-
tion is burnished till it glows like the gate of paradise.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the
ends thereof are the ways of death. c This is dishonesty
described to the life. At first you look down upon a
smooth and verdant path covered with flowers, perfum-
ed with odors," and overhung with fruits and grateful
shade. Its long perspective is illusive; for it ends quick-
ly in a precipice, over which you pitch into irretrievable
ruin.

For the sources of this inevitable disaster, we need
look no further than the eflect of dishonesty upon a
man's own mind. The difference between cunning and
wisdom, is the difference between acting by the certain
and immutable laws of nature, and acting by the shifts
of temporary expedients. An honest man puts his pros-
perity upon the broad current of those laws which gov-
ern the world. A crafty man means to pry between
them, to steer across them, to take advantage of them.
An honest man steers by God's chart ; and a dishonest
man by his own. Which is the most liable to perplexi-
ties and fatal mistakes of judgment ? Wisdom steadily
ripens to the end ; cunning is worm-ljitten, and soon
drops from the tree.

a Prov. xxnii. 8. b Job. v. 4, 5. c Prov. xiv. 12.

72 S I X W A R N I N G S .

I could repeat the names of many men (every village
has such, and they swarm in cities) who are skillful, inde-
fatigable, but audaciously dishonest ; and for a time they
seemed going straight forward to the realm of wealth.
I never knew a single one to avoid ultimate ruin. Men
who act under dishonest passions, are like men riding
fierce horses. It is not always with the rider when or
where he shall stop. If for his sake, the steed dashes
wildly on while the road is smooth ; so, turning suddenly
into a rough and dangerous way, the rider must go
madly forward for the steed's sake, — now chafed, his
mettle up, his eye afire, and beast and burden like a bolt
speeding through the air, until some bound or sudden
fall tumble both to the ground — a crushed and mangled
mass.

A man pursuing plain ends by honest means may be
troubled on every side, yet not distressed: perplexed, but not
in dispair: persecuted, but not forsaken: cast down, but
not destroyed.'' But those that pursue their advantage
by a round of dishonesties, ivhen fear cometh as a deso-
lation, and destruction as a wliirlwind, when distress and
anguish come upoji them, . . . shall eat of the fruit of
their own loay, and be filled icith their own devices ; for
the turning away of the simple shall slay them ; and the
prosperity of fools shall destroy them.''

VI. The Bible overflows with warnings to those
who gain wealth by violent extortion, or by any flagrant
villany. Some men stealthily slip from under them, the
possessions of the poor. Some beguile the simple and
heedless of their patrimony. Some tyranize over igno-
rance, and extort from it its fair domains. Some steal

a 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9. b Prov. i. 27—32.

SIX WARNINGS. 73

away the senses, and intoxicate the mind — the more
readilv and largely to cheat ; some set their traps in all
the dark places of men's adversity, and prowl for
wrecks all along the shores on which men's fortunes go
to pieces. Men will take advantage of extreme misery,
to wring it with more griping tortures, and compel it to
the extremest sacrifices ; and stop only when no more
can be borne by the sufferer, or nothing more extracted
by the usurer. The earth is as full of avaricious mon-
sters, as the tropical forests are of beasts of prey. But
amid all the lions, and tigers, and hyenas, is seen the
stately bulk of three huge Behemoths.

The first Behemoth is that incarnate fiend who navi-
gates the ocean to traffic in human misery and freight
with the groans and tears of agony. Distant shores are
sought with cords and manacles ; villages surprised with
torch and sword ; and the loathsome ship swallows what
the sword and the fire has spared. By night and day
the voyage speeds, and the storm spares wretches more
relentless than itself. The wind wafts and the sun
lights the path for a ship whose log is written in blood.
Hideous profits, dripping red, even at this hour, lure these
infernal miscreants to their remorseless errands. The
thirst of gold inspires such courage, skill, and cunning
vigilance, that the thunders of four allied navies cannot
sink the infamous fiieet.

What wonder? Just such a Behemoth of rapacity
stalks among us, and fattens on the blood of our
sons. Men there are, who, without a pang or gleam of
remorse, will coolly wait for character to rot, and health
to sink, and means to melt, that they may suck up the
last drop of the victim's blood. Our streets are full of
7

74 SIX WARNINGS.

reeling wretches whose bodies and nianhood and souls
have been crushed and put to the press, that monsters
might wring out of them a wine for their infernal thirst.
The agony of midnight massacre, the phrenzy of the
ship's dungeon, the living death of the middle passage,
the wails of separation, and the dismal torpor of hope-
less servitude — are these found only in the piracy of
the slave-trade ? They all are among us ! worse assassi-
nations ! worse dragging to a prison-ship ! worse groans
ringing from the fetid hold 1 worse separations of fami-
lies ! worse bondage of intemperate men, enslaved by
that most inexorable of all task-masters — sensiftil habit !
The third Behemoth is seen luiiiing among the Indian
savages, and bringing the arts of learning, and the skill
of civilization, to aid in plundering the debauched bar-
barian. The cunning, murdering, scal[)ing Indian, is no
match for the christian white-man. Compared with the
midnight knavery of men reared in schools, rocked by
religion, tempered and taught by the humane institutions
of liberty and civilization, all the craft of the savage is
twilight. Vast estates have been accumulated, without
having an honest farthing in them. Our Penitentiaries
might be sent to school to the Treaty-grounds and Coun-
cil-grounds. Smugglers and swindlers might humble
themselves in the presence of Indian traders. All the
crimes against property known to our laws flourish with
unnatural vigor ; and some, unknown to civilized villany.
To swindle ignorance, to over-reach simplicity, to lie
without scruple to any extent, from mere implication
down to perjury ; to tempt the savages to rob each
other, and to receive their plunder ; to sell goods at in-
credible prices to the sober Indian, then to intoxicate
him, and steal them all back by a sham bargain, to he

S I X AV A R N I N G S . 75

sold again, and stolen again ; to employ falsehood, lust,
threats, whiskey, and even the knife and the pistol ; iu
short, to consume the Indian's substance by every vice
and crime possible to an unprincipled heart inflamed
with an insatiable rapacity, unwatched by Justice, and
unrestrained by Law — this it is to be an Indian Tra-
der. I would rather inherit the bowels of V^esuvius, or
make my bed in Etna, than own the burning lava of
those estates which have been scalped off from human
beings as the hunter strips a beaver of its fur. Of all
these, OF all who gain possessions by extortion and rob-
beiy, never let yourself be envious ! 1 loas envious at
the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Their
eyes stand out with fatness: thei/ have more than heart
could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concern-
ing oppression. They have set their mouth against the
heaven, and their tongue walketh ilirough the earth.
When I sought to know this, it was too j}ainful for me, un-
til I went into the sanctuary. Surely thou didst set them
in slippery jilacesl thou castedst them down into destruc-
tion as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with
terrors. As a dream when one awakelh, so O Lord! lolien
thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image!"'

I would not bear their hearts who have so made
money, were the world a solid globe of gold, and mine.
1 would not stand for them in the judgment, were every
star of Heaven a realm of riches, and mine. I would
not walk with them the burning marl of Hell, to bear
their torment, and utter their groans, for the throne of
God itself.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

SIX -WARNINGS.

Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the
getter. Riches bought with guile, God will pay for
with vengeance. Riches got by fraud, are dug out of
one's own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust riches
curse the owner in getting, in keeping, in transmitting.
They curse his children in their father's memory, in
their own wasteful habits, in drawing around them all
bad men to be their companions.

While I do not discourage your search for wealth, 1
warn you that it is not a cruise upon level seas, and
under bland skies. You advance where ten thousand
are broken in pieces before they reach the mart ; where
those who reach it are worn out by their labors past
enjoying their riches. You seek a land pleasant to the
sight, but dangerous to the feet ; a land of fragrant winds,
which lull to security ; of golden fruits, which are pois-
onous; of glorious hues, which dazzle and mislead.

You may be rich and be pure ; but it will cost you a
struggle. You may be rich and go to heaven ; but ten,
doubtless, will sink beneath their riches, where one
breaks through them to Heaven. If you have entered
this shining way, begin to look for snares and traps. Go
not careless of your danger, and provoking it. See, on
every side of you, how many there are who seal God's
word with their blood : —

They that will be rich, fall into temjAalion and a snare,
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men
in destruction and perdition. For the love of Money is
the root of all evil, lohich, while some have coveted after,
they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves
through icith many sorrovjs.'^

a 1 Tim. li. 9, 10.

LECTURE IV.

My son, if sinners entice tliee, consent thou not. Prov. i. 10.

He who is allured to embrace evil under some engag-
ing form of beauty, or seductive appearance of good, is
enticed. A man is tempted to what he knows to be sin-
ful ; he is enticed where the evil appears to be innocent.
The Enticer wins his way by bewildering the moral
sense, setting false lights ahead of the imagination, paint-
ing disease with the hues of health, making impurity to
glow like innocency, strewing the broad-road with flow-
ers, lulling its travellers with soothing music, hiding all
its chasms, covering its pitfalls, and closing its long per-
spective with the mimic glow of Paradise. Enticers are
mean, under the guise of magnanimity ; corrupt, under
the appearance of virtue ; v/ith a great show of jionor,
they are base ; they cover a foul and pestilent heart
with the show of modesty. They scruple at nothing
which is wicked, if it is baptized with the name of some
virtue. Their tricks are christened sagacity ; their sel-
fishness, frugality; their pride, personal dignity; their
extortion, justice ; their salacious heats, human nature :
and the full tide of depravity, only man's weakness.
7*

/o PORTRAIT GALLERY.

The young are seldom tempted to outright wicked-
ness ; evil comes to them as an enticement. The hon-
est generosity and fresh heart of youth would revolt
from open meanness and undisguised vice. The Adver-
sary conforms his wiles to their nature. He tempts
them to the basest deeds by beginning with innocent
ones, gliding to more exceptionable, and finally, to posi-
tively wicked ones.

The deadliest ends have the pleasantest beginnings,
as, often, destructive paths open in sunny meads and
meadovi^s. All our warnings then must be against the
vernal beauty of vice. Its autumn and winter none
wish. It is the bud and graceful blossom, hiding poison
under brilliant colors, that entice the unwary to pluck
the fatal beauty. — It is my purpose to describe the en-
ticement of particular men upon the young.

Every youth knows that there are dcngerous men
abroad who would injure him by lying, by slander, by
over-reaching and plundering him. From such they have
little to fear, because they are upon their guard. Few
imagine that they have any thing to dread from those
who have no designs against them ; yet, such is the
instinct of imitation, so insensibly does the example
of men steal upon us and warp our conduct to their
likeness, that the young often receive a deadly injury
from men with whom they never spoke. As all
bodies in nature give out or receive caloric until there
is an equilibrium of temperature, so there is a radia-
tion of character upon character. Our thoughts, our
tastes, our emotions, our partialities, our prejudices, and
finally, our conduct and habits, are insensibly changed
l)y the silent influence of men who never once directlv

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 79

tempted us, or even knew the effect which they pro-
duced. I shall draw for your inspection some of these
dangerous men, whose open or silent enticement has
availed against thousands, and will be exerted upon
thousands more.

I. The \vn. It is sometimes said by phlegmatic
theologians that Christ never laughed, but often wept.
1 shall not quarrel with the assumption. I only say that
men have within them a faculty of mirthfulness which
God created. I suppose it was meant for use. Those
who do not feel the impulsion of this faculty, are not the
ones to sit in judgment upon those who do. It would
be very absurd for an owl in an ivy bush, to read lec-
tures on optics to an eagle ; or for a mole to counsel a
lynx on the sin of sharp-sightedness. Stupid as these
animals are, we know not that they ever attempted such
folly. It is worthy of God, that beside the sober facul-
ties of the mind, there should be an Imagination to see
a bloom and beauty on every thing ; and Wit, to the
eye of which every thing glances with varied colors, like
changeable silk. He is divinely favored who thus may
trace a silver vein in all the affairs of life ; see sparkles of
light in the gloomiest scenes ; and absolute radiance in
those which are bright. There are in the clouds ten
thousand inimitable forms and hues to be found no
where else ; there are in plants and trees beautiful
shapes and endless varieties of color ; there are in
flowers minute pencilings of exquisite color; in fruits a
delicate bloom, — like a veil, making the face of beauty
more beautiful ; sporting among the trees, and upon the
flowers, are tiny insects — gems which glow like living dia-
monds. Ten thousand eyes stare full upon these things

80 PORTRAIT gallp:ry.

and see nothing ; yet they are, to those who observe
them, the poHsh with which the Divine Artist has finished
his matchless work. Thus, too, upon all the labors of
life, the events of each hour, the course of good or evil ;
upon each action, or word, or attitude ; upon all the end-
less changes transpiring among myriad men, there is a
delicate grace, or bloom, or sparkle, or radiance, which
catches the eye of Wit, and delights it with appearances
which are to the weightier matters of life, what odor,
colors, and symmetry, are to the marketable and commer-
cial properties of matter.

A mind imbued with this feeling is full of dancing
motes, such as we see moving in sunbeams when they
pour through some shutter into a dark room ; and when
the sights and conceptions of wit are uttered in words,
they diffuse upon others that pleasure whose brightness
shines upon its own cheerful imagination.

It is not strange that the Wit is a universal favorite.
All companies rejoice in his presence, watch for his
words, repeat his language. He moves like a comet
whose incomings and outgoings are uncontrolable. He
astonishes the regular stars with the eccentricity of his
orbit, and flirts his long tail athwart the heaven without
the slightest misgivings that it will be troublesome, and
coquets the very sun with audacious familiarity. When
wit is unperverted, it lightens labor, makes the very
face of care to shine, diffuses cheerfulness among men,
multiplies the sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the
dark things of life, and heightens the lustre of the bright-
est. If perverted, wit becomes an instrument of ma-
levolence, it gives a deceitful coloring to vice, it reflects

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 81

a semblance of truth upon error, and distorts the fea-
tures of real truth by false lights.

The Wit is liable to indolence by relying upon his
genius ; to vanity, by the praise which is offered as in-
cense ; to malignant sarcasm, to revenge his affronts ;
to dissipation, from the habit of exhilaration, and from
the company which court him. The mere Wit is only
a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses,
not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while
the horses draw.

The young often repine at their own native dullness ;
and since God did not choose to endow them with this
shining quality, they will make it for themselves. Forth-
with they are smitten with the itch of imitation. Their
ears purvey to their mouth the borrowed jest ; their
eyes note the Wit's fashion, and the awkward youth
clumsily apes, in a side circle, the Wit's deft and grace-
ful gesture, the smooth smile, the roguish twinkle, the
sly look — much as Caliban would imitate Ariel. Everv
community is supplied with self-made Wits. One retails
other men's sharp witticisms, as a Jew puts off thread-
bare garments. Another roars over his own brutal ([uo-
tations of scripture. Another invents a witticism by a
logical deduction of circumstances, and sniffs and gig-
gles over the result, as^ complacently as if other men
laughed too. Others lay in wait around your conversa-
tion to trip up some word, or strike a light out of some
sentence. Others fish in dictionaries for pitiful puns ; —
and all fulfill the prediction of Isaiah : Ye shall conceive
chaj\ and bring forth stuhhk.

It becomes a mania. Each school has its allusions,
each circle has its apish motion, each companionhood

82 POKTRAIT GALLERY.

ils park of wit-artillery ; and we find street- wit, shop-
wit, auction-wit, school-wit, fool's wit, whiskey-wit,
stable-wit, and almost every kind of wit, but mother-
wit ; — puns, quibbles, catches, would-be-jests, thread-bare
stories, and gew-gaw tinsel, — every thing but the real
diamond^ which sparkles simply because God made it so
that it could not help sparkling. Real, native mirthful-
ness is like a pleasant rill which quietly wells up in
some verdant nook, and steals out from among reeds
and willows noiselessly, and is seen far down the
meadow, as much by the fruitfulness of its edges in
flowers, as by its own glimmering light. Allected wit,
like a pump, draws up from an artificial well, every
drop by the force-w^ork of the handle.

Let every one beware of the insensible effect of witty
men upon him ; they gild lies, so that base coin may pass
for true ; that which is grossly wrong, wit may make fasci-
nating ; when no argument could persuade you, the cor-
ruscations of wit may dazzle and blind you ; when duty
presses you, the threatenings of this human lightning may
make you afraid to do right. Remember that the very
best office of wit, is only to lighten the serious labors of life;
that it is only a torch, by which men may cheer the gloom
of a dark way. When it sets up to be your counsellor or
your guide, it is the fool's fire, flitting irregularly and
leading you into the quag or morass. The great Dra-
matist represents a witty sprite to have put an ass's
head upon a man's shoulders ; beware that you do not
let this mischievous sprite put an ape's head upon yours.

If God has not given you this quicksilver, no art can
make it; nor need you regret it. The stone, the
wood, and the iron, are a thousand times more valua-

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 83

ble to society than pearls and diamonds and rave gems ;
and sterling sense, and industry, and integrity, are better
a thousand times, in the hard work of living, than the
brilliance of wit.

II. There is a character which I shall describe as the
Humorist. I do not employ the term to designate one
who indulges in that pleasantest of all wit — latent wit ;
but to describe a creature who conceals a coarse ani-
malism under a brilliant, jovial exterior. The danger-
ous humorist is of a plump condition, evincing the excel-
lent digestion of a good eater, and answering very well
to the Psalmist's description : His eyes stand out with
fatness; he is not in trouble as other men are; he has
more than heart could wish, and his tongue walketh
through the earth. Whatever is pleasant in ease, what-
ever is indulgent in morals, whatever is solacing in
luxury ; the jovial few, the convivial many, the glass, the
cards, the revel, and midnight uproar, — these are his de-
lights. His manners are easy and agreeable ; his face
redolent of fun and good nature ; his whole air that of
a man fond of the utmost possible bodily refreshment.
Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect and secretive of his
course, to maintain a place in genteel society ; for that
is a luxury. He is not a glutton, but a choice eater.
He is not a gross drinker, only a gentlemanly consumer
of every curious compound of liquor. He has travelled;
he can tell you which, in every city, is the best bar, the
best restaurateur, the best stable. He knows every
theatre, each actor, particularly is he versed in the select
morsels of the scandalous indulgence peculiar to each.
He knows every race-course, every nag, the history of
all the famous matches, and the pedigree of every distin-

84 PORTRAIT GALLKRY.

guished horse, even to the apocalyptic horse which John
saw. The whole vocabulary of pleasure is v- ernacular, —
its wit, its slang, its watchwords, and blackletter litera-
ture. He is a profound annalist of scandal ; every
stream of news, clear or muddy, disembogues into the
gulf of his prodigious memory. He can tell you, after
living but a week in a city, who gambles, when, for what
sums, and w^ith what fate ; who is impure, who was,
who is suspected, who is not suspected — but ought to
be. He is a morbid anatomist of morals ; a brilliant
flesh-fly — unerring to detect taint.

Like other men, he loves admiration and desires to ex-
tend his influence. AH these manifold accomplishments
are exhibited before the callow young. That he may
secure a train of useful followers, he is profuse of money;
and moves among them with an easy, insinuating frank-
ness, a never-ceasing gaiety, so spicy with fun, so di-
verting with stories, so full of little hits, sly innuendoes,
or solemn wit, with now and then a rare touch of
dextrous mimicry, and the whole so pervaded by the in-
describable flavor, the changing hues of humor, — that
the young are bewildered with idolatrous admiration.
What gay young man, who is old enough to admire him-
self and be ashamed of his parents, can resist a man so
bedewed with humor, narrating exquisite stories with
such mock gravity, with such slyness of mouth, and
twinkling of the eye, with such grotesque attitudes,
and significant gestures ? He is declared to be the most
remarkable man in the world. Now take off this man's
dress, put out the one faculty of mirthfulness, and he
would stand disclosed without a single positive virtue !
With strong appetites deeply indulged, hovering perpet-

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 85

ually upon the twilight edge of every vice ; and whose
wickedness is only not apparent, because it is garnished
with flowers and leaves and garlands ; who is not des-
pised, only because his various news, artfully told, keep
us in good humor with ourselves ! At one period of
youthful life this creature's influence supplants, that of
every other man. There is an absolute fascination
in him which awakens a craving in the mind to be
of his circle ; plain duties become drudgery, home has
no light, life at its ordinary key is monotonous, and must
be screwed up to the concert pitch of this wonderful
genius ! As he tells his stories, so with a wretched
grimace of imitation, apprentices will try to tell them ;
as he gracefully swings through the street, they will
roll ; they will leer because he stares genteelly ; he
sips, they guzzle — and talk impudently, because he talks
with easy confidence. He walks erect, they strut;
he lolls, they lounge ; he is less than a man, and they
become even less than he.

Copper-rings, huge blotches of breast-pins, wild stream-
ing neckerchiefs, jaunty hats, odd clothes, superfluous
walking-sticks, ill-uttered oaths, stupid jokes, and blun-
dering pleasantries — these are the first fruits of imitation !
There are various grades of it, from the office, store,
shop, street, clear down to the hostlery and the stable.
Our cities are filled with these juvenile non-descript
monsters, these compounds of vice, low wit and vul-
garity. The original is morally detestable, and the
counterfeit is a very base imitation of a very base thing ;
the dark shadow of a very ugly substance.

III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who never sees a
good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.

TRAIT GALLERY.

lie is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to
light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.
The Cynic puts all human actions into only two classes
— openly bad, and secretly bad. All virtue and generosity
and disinterestedness are merely the appearance of good,
but selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man does
a good thing except for profit. The effect of his con-
versation upon your feelings is to chill and sear them ;
to send you away sore and morose. His criticisms and
innuendoes lall indiscriminately upon every lovely thing,
like frost upon flowers. If a man is said to be pure and
chaste, he will answer : Yes, in the day thne. If a wo-
man is pronounced virtuous, he will reply : yes, as xjel.
3'Ir. A. is a religious man : yes,on Sundays. Mr. B. has
just joined the church : certainly; the elections are coming
on. The minister of the gospel is called an example of
diligence : It is his trade. Such a man is generous : of
vther men's money. That man is obliging : to lull suspi-
cion and cheat you. This man is upright : because he is
green. Thus his eye strains out every good quality,
and takes in only the bad, — as the vulture, when in
the highest heaven, will sail by living flocks and herds,
but comes like an arrow down upon the smallest
carcass. To him religion is hypocrisy, honesty a pre-
paration for fraud, virtue only want of opportunity, and
undeniable purity, asceticism. The live-long day he w ill
coolly sit with sneering lip, uttering sharp speeches
in the quietest manner, and in polished phrase, transfix-
'm<r every character which is presented: His words are
softer than oil, yet are they drawn srcords. «

All this, to the young, seems a wonderful knowledge of

a Ps. Iv. 21.

PORTRAIT CALLER r. 87

human nature ; they honor a man who appears to have
found out mankind. They begin to indulge themselves
in flippant sneers ; and with supercilious l)row, and im-
pudent tongue, wagging to an empty brain, call to
naught the wise, the long tried, and the venerable.

I do believe that man is corrupt enough ; but some-
thing of good has survived his wreck ; something of
evil religion has restrained, .and something partially re-
stored ; yet, I look upon the human heart as a mountain
of fire. I dread its crater. I tremble when 1 see its
lava roll the fiery stream. Therefore, I am the more
glad, if upon the old crust of past eruptions, I can find
a single flower springing up. A flower in a howling
wilderness, is yet more precious to the pilgrim, because
the lonely tenant of desolation. So far from rejecting
appearances of virtue in the corrupt heart of a depraved
race, I am eager to see their light as ever mariner was
to see a star in a stormy night.

Moss will grow upon grave-stones ; the ivy will cXm'j,
to the mouldering pile ; the mistletoe springs from the
dying branch ; and, God be praised, something green,
something fair to the sight and grateful to the heart,
will yet twine around and grow out of the seams and
cracks of the desolate temple of the human heart!

Who could walk through Thebes, Palmyra, or Petraaa,
and survey the wide waste of broken arches, crumbled
altars, fallen pillars, eflaced cornices, toppling walls, and
crushed statues, with no feelings but those of con-
tempt? Who, unsorrowing, could see the stork's nest
upon the carved pillar, satyrs dancing on marble pave-
ments, and hateful scorpions nestling where beauty once
dwelt, and dragons the sole tenants of royal palaces ?

o8 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

Amid such melancholy magnificence, even the misan-
thrope might weep ! If here and there an altar stood
unbruised, or a graven column unblighted, or a statue
nearly perfect, he might well feel love for a man-
wrought stone, so beautiful, when all else is so dreary
and desolate. Thus, though man is as a desolate city,
and his passions are as the wild beasts of the wilderness
howling in king's palaces, yet he is God's workmanship,
and a thousand touches of exquisite beauty remain.
Since Christ hath put his sovereign hand to restore
man's ruin, many points are remoulded, and the fair
form of a new fabric already appears growing from the
ruins, and the first faint flame is glimmering upon the
restored altar.

It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of
opinion upon our fellow men, without injuring the ten-
derness and delicacy of our own feelings. A man will
be what his most cherished feelings are. If he encour-
ages appetites, he will be not far from beastly ; if he
encourage a noble generosity, such will he be ; if he
nurse bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own spirit will
absorb the poison ; and he will crawl among men as
a burnished adder, whose life is mischief, whose errand
is death.

Although experience should correct the indiscriminate
confidence of the young, no expeiience should render
them callous to goodness wherever seen. He who
hunts for flowers, will find flowers ; but he who hunts
for vermin, will find vermin ; and he who loves weeds,
may find weeds. Let it be remembered, that no man,
who is not himself mortally diseased, will have a relish
for disease in others. A swoln wretch, blotched all

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 89

over with leprosy, may grin hideously at, every wart or
excrescence upon beauty. A wholesome man will be
pained at it, and seek not to notice it. Reject, then, the
morbid ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call yourself a
man !

IV. 1 fear that few villages exist without a specimen
of the LinF.RTiNE.

He is a beast, put by accident into human form. His
errand into this world is to explore every depth of sen-
suality, and collect upon himself the foulness of every
one. He is proud to be vile ; his ambition is to be viler
than other men. Were we not confronted almost daily
by such wretches, it would be hard to believe that any
could exist, to whom purity and decency were a burden,
and only corruption a delight. This creature has chang-
ed his nature, until only that which disgusts a pure mind
pleases iiis. He is lured by the scent of carrion. His
coarse feelings, stimulated by gross excitants, are insen-
sible to delicacy. The exquisite bloom, the dew and
freshness of the ilowers of the heart which delight botii
good men and God himself, he gazes upon, as a Behe-
moth would gaze enraptured upon a prairie of flowers.
It is so much pasture. The forms, the odors, the hues
are only a mouthful for his terrible appetite. Therefore,
hi* breath blights every innocent thing. He sneers at
the mention of purity, and leers in the very fiice of
Virtue, as though she was herself corrupt, if the truth
were known. He assures the credulous disciple that
there is no purity ; that its appearances are only the
veils which cover indulgence — the paint which hides
decay. Nay, he solicits praise for the very openness
of his evil ; and tells the listener that all act as he acts,
8"

90 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

but only few are courageous enough to own it. Tiius,
iiis shameless excess is sanctified with sacred names.
But the uttermost parts of depravity are laid open only
when several such monsters meet together, and vie
with each other, as we might suppose shapeless mud-
monsters disport in the slimiest ooze of the ocean.
They dive in fierce rivalry which shall reach the most
infernal depth, and bring up the blackest sediment. It
makes the blood of an honest man run cold, to iiear but
the echo of the shameless rehearsals of their salacious
enterprises. Each strives to tell a blacker tale than the
other. When tlie abomination of their actual life is not
damnable enough to satisfy the ambition of their unutter-
able corruption, they devise, in their imagination, scenes
yet moi'e flagrant ; swear that they have performed them,
and when they separate, each strives to make his lying-
boastings true. It would seem as if miscreants so
loathsome would have no power of temptation upon the
young. Experience shows that the worst men are, often,
the most skilfull in touching the springs of human ac-
tion. A young man knows little of life ; less of himself.
He feels in his bosom the various impulses, wild desires,
restless cravings he can hardly tell for what, a som-
bre melancholy when all is gay, a violent exhilaration
when others are sober. These wild gushes of feeling,
peculiar to youth, the sagacious tempter has felt, has
studied, has practiced upon, until he can sit before that
most capacious organ, the human mind, knowing eVery
stop and ail the combinations, and competent to toucli
every note throughout the diapason. As a 'serpent de-
ceived the purest of mortals, so now a beast may mis-
lead their posterity. He begins afar oft'. He decries

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 91

the virtue of all men ; studies to produce a doubt that
any are under selt-restraint. He unpacks his filthy
stories, plays off the fire-works of his corrupt imagi-
nation— its blue-lights, its red-lights, and green-lights,
and sparkle-spitting lights ; and edging in upon the
yielding youth, who begins to wonder at his experi-
ence, he boasts his first exploits, he hisses at the pu-
rity of woman ; he grows yet bolder, tells moi-e wicked
deeds, and invents worse even than he ever performed,
though he has performed worse than good men ever
thought of. All thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are
merged in one and that the lowest, vilest, most detes-
table ambition.

Had I a son of years, I could, with thanksgiving, see
him go down to the grave, rather than fall into the maw
of this most besotted devil. I had rather see him rot in
a lazar-house, than putrify with such corruption. The
plague is mercy, the cholera is love, the deadliest fever
is refreshment to man's body, in comparison with this
epitome and essence of moral disease. He lives among
men. Hell's ambassador with full credentials ; nor can
we conceive that there should be need of any other
fiend to perfect the works of darkness, while he carries
his body among us, stufled with every pestilent druo- (^f
corruption. The heart of every virtuous young man
should loathe him ; if he speaks, you should as soon hear
a wolf bark. Gather around you the venomous snake,
the poisonous toad, the fetid vulture, the ijrowling hy-
ena, and their company would be an honor to you above
his ; for they at least remain within their own nature ;
but he goes out of his nature that he may become more
])eastly than it is possible for a mere beast to be.

92 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

He is liateful to religion, hateful to virtue, hateful to
decency, hateful to the coldest morality. The stenchful
iciior of his dissolved heart, has flowed over every feel-
ing of his nature, and left them as the burning lava
leaves the garden, the orchard, and the vineyard. And
it is a wonder that the bolt o£ God which crushed Sod-
om does not slay him. It is a wonder that the earth
does not refuse the burden and open and swallow him
up. 1 do not fear that the young will be undermined
by his direct assaults. But some will imitate, and their
example will be again feebly imitated, and finally, a
remote circle of disciples will spread the diluted conta-
gion among the virtuous. This man will be the foun-
tain-head, and though none will come to drink at a hot-
spring, yet further down along the stream it sends out,
will be found many scooping from its waters.

Y. I have described the devil in his native form, but he
sometimes appears as an angel of light. There is a pol-
ished Libertine, in manners studiously refined, in taste
faultless ; his face is mild and engaging ; his words drop
as pure as newly made honey. In general society, he
would rather attract regard as a model of purity, and
suspicion herself could hardly look askance upon him.
Under this brilliant exterior his heart is like a sepulchre,
full of all uncleanness. Contrasted with the gross liber-
tine, it would not be supposed that he had a thought in
common with him. If his heart could be opened to our
eye, as it is to God's, we should perceive scarcely dis-
similar feelings in respect to appetite. Professing un-
bounded admiration of virtue in general, he leaves not in
private a point untransgressed. His reading has culled
every glowing picture of am.orous poets, every tempting

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 93

scene of loose dramatists, and looser novelists. Enriched
by these, his imagination, like a rank soil, is overgrown
with a prodigal luxuriance of poison-herbs and deadly
flowers. Men, such as this man is, frequently aspire to
be the censors of morality. They are hurt at the inju-
dicious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit ! They
make great outcry when plain words are employed to
denounce base things. They are astonishingly sensitive
and fearful lest good men should soil their hands with
too much meddling with evil. Their cries are not the
evidence of sensibility to virtue, but of too lively a sensi-
bility to vice. Sensibility is, often, only the flutter-
ing of an impure heart.

At the very time that their voice is ringing an alarm
against immoral reformations, they are secretly scepti-
cal of every tenet of virtue, and practically unfaithful to
every one. Of these two libertines, the most refined is
the most dangerous. The one is a rattlesnake which
carries its warning with it ; the other, hiding his bur-
nished scales in the grass, skulks to perform unsuspected
deeds in darkness. The one is the visible fog and miasm
of the morass ; the other is the serene air of a tropical
city, which, though so brilliant, is loaded with invisible
pestilence.

The Politician. If there be a man on earth whose
character should be framed of the most sterling honesty,
and whose conduct should conform to the most scrupu-
lous morality, it is the man who administers public
affairs. The most romantic notions of integrity are
here not extravagant. As, under our institutions, pub-
lic men will be, upon the whole, fair exponents of the
character of their constituents, the plainest way to

94 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

secure honest public men, is to inspire those wiio make
them, with a right understanding of what political char-
acter ought to be. Youn^ men should be prompted to
discriminate between the specious, and the real ; the art-
ful, and the honest ; the wise, and the cunning ; the
patriotic, and the pretender. I will sketch —

VI. The Demagogue. The lowest of politicians is
that man who seeks to gratify an invariable selfishness
by pretending to seek the public good. For a pro-
fitable popularity he accommodates himself to all opin-
ions, to all dispositions, to every side, and to each preju-
dice. He is a mirror, with no face of its own, but a
smooth surface from which each man of ten thousand
may see himself reflected. He glides from man to man
coinciding with their views, pretending their feelings,
simulating their tastes ; with this one, he hates a man ;
with that on€, he loves the same man ; he favors a law,
and he dislikes it ; he approves, and opposes ; he is on
both sides at once, and seemingly wishes that lie could
be on one side more than both sides. He attends meet-
ings to suppress intemperance, — but at elections makes
every grog-shop free to all drinkers. He can with equal
relish plead most eloquently for temperance, or toss
oir a dozen glasses in a dirty grocery. He thinks that
there is a time for every thing, and therefore, at one
time he swears and jeers and leers witii a carousing
crew ; and at another Hime, having happily been con-
verted, he displays the various features of devotion.
Indeed, he is a capacious christian ; an epitome of faith.
He piously asks the class-leader of the welfare of his
charge, for he was always a Methodist and always sliall
be, — until he meets a Presbyterian ; then he is a Pres-

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 95

byterian, old-school or new, as the case requires. How-
ever, as he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a Baptist,
in a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink he tells
the zealous elder, tl;at he never had one of his children
baptised, not he ! He whispers to the Reformer that he
abhors all creeds but Baptism and the Bible. After all
this, room will be found in his heart for the fugitive sects
also, which come and go like clouds in a summer-sky.
His flattering attention at church edifies the simple-
hearted preacher, who admires that a plain sermon
should make a man whisper amen ! and weep ; or at
least wipe his eyes to coax a tear. Upon the stump his
tact is no less rare. He roars and bawls with coura-
geous plainness, on points about which all agree : but
on subjects where men differ, his meaning is nicely
ballanced on a pivot that it may dip either way. He
depends for success chiefly upon humorous stories. A
glowing patriot a-telling stories is a dangerous antago-
nist ; for it is hard to expose the fallacy of a hearty
laugh, and men convulsed with merriment are slow to
jjerceive in what way an argument is a reply to a story.
Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, and versatile
cunning have advanced many a bad man higher than a
good man could attain. Men will admit that he has not
a single moral virtue ; but he is smart. Smart? — It does
not occur to many, that there is much difference between
men and game ; or that offices and laws are much more
than beaver-traps ; or public men very different from
smart trappers. We object to no man for amusing him-
self at the fertile resources of the politician here painted;
for sober men are sometimes pleased with the grimaces
and mischievous tricks of a versatile monkey ; but would

96 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

it not be strange indeed if tiiey should select him for a
ruler, or make him an examplar to their sons ?

VII. I describe next a more respectable and more dan-
gerous politician— the Party Man. He has associated
his ambition, his interests, and his aflections with a
party. His very self-love is love of party. He pre-
fers, doubtless, that his side should be victorious by
the best means, and under the championship of good
men ; but rather than lose the victory, he will con-
sent to any means, and follow any man. Thus, with
a general desire to be upright, the exigency of his
party constantly pushes him to dishonorable deeds.
He opposes fraud by craft ; lie, by lie ; slander, by
counter-aspersion. To be sure it is wrong to mis-state,
to distort, to suppress, or color facts ; it is wrong to
employ the evil passions ; to set class against class ;
the poor against the rich, the country against the
city, the farmer against the mechanic, one section
against another section. But his opponents do it, and
if they will take advantage of men's corruption, he must,
or lose by his virtue. He gradually adopts two charac-
ters, a personal and a political character. All the re-
quisitions of his conscience he obeys in his private char-
acter; all the requisitions of his party, he obeys in his
political conduct. In one character, he is a man of prin-
ciple ; in the other, a man of mere expedients. As a
man he means to be veracious, honest, moral ; as a poli-
tician^ he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous, — any thing
for party. As a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue ;
as a politician, he employs him as a scavenger. As a
man, he shrinks from the flagitiousness of slander ; as a
politician, he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 97

in the success gained by it. As a man, he respects no
one who is rotten in heart ; as a politician, no man
through whom victory may be gained can be too bad.
As a citizen, he is an apostle of temperance ; as a politi-
cian, he puts his shoulder under the men who deluge
their track with whiskey, marching a crew of brawling
patriots, pugnaciously drunk, to exercise the freeman's
noblest franchise, — the vote. As a citizen, he is consid-
erate of the young, and counsels them with admirable
wisdom ; then, as a politician, he votes for tools, sup-
porting for the magistracy worshipful aspirants scraped
from the ditch, the grogshop, and the brothel ; thus say-
ing by deeds which the young are quick to understand :
"I jested, when I warned you of bad company; for
you perceive none worse than those whom I delight to
honor." For his religion he will give up all his secular
interests ; but for his politics he gives up even his reli-
gion. He adores virtue, and rewards vice. Whilst
bolstering up unrighteous measures, and more unrighte-
ous men, he prays for the advancement of religion, and
justice, and honor ! I would to God that his prayer
might be answered upon his own political head ; for
never was there a place where such blessings were
more needed ! I am puzzled to know what will happen
at death to this politic christian, but most unchristian
politician. Will both of his characters go heavenward
together ? If the strongest prevails, he will certainly
go to hell. If his weakest, (which is his christian charac-
ter,) is saved, what will become of his political character ?
Shall he be sundered in two, as Solomon proposed to
divide the contested infant ? If this style of character
were not flagitiously wicked, it Vv'ould still be supremely
9

98 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

ridiculous— but it is both. Let young men mark these
amphibious exemplars to avoid their influence. The
young have nothing to gain from those who are saints in
religion and moi'als, and Machiavels in politics ; who
have partitioned oH' their heart, invited Christ into one
half, and Belial into the other. He who does not act by
Justice, right, and truth, but only by passion, prejudice,
interest, and selfishness, is a robber in jirinciple, if circum-
stances have restrained him from being one in practice.
Tlie robber's principles are only dangerous to the young
when adopted by moral men, and baptized into the name
of some virtue.

It is widely said, that a strictly honest man who de-
sires purely the public good, who will not criminally
flatter the people, nor take part in lies, or party-slander,
nor descend to the arts of the rat, the weasel, and the
fox, cannot succeed in politics. It is calmly said by
thousands that one cannot be a politician and a chris-
tian. Indeed, a man is liable to downright ridicule if he
speaks in good earnest of a scrupulously honest and reli-
giously moral politician. I regard all such representa-
tions as false. We are not without men whose career
is a refutation of the slander. It poisons the commu-
nity to teach this fatal necessity of corruption in a
course which so many must pursue. It is not strange, if
such be the popular opinion, that young men include the
sacrifice of strict integrity as a necessary element of a
political life, and calmly agree to it, as to an inevitable
misfortune, rather than to a dark and voluntary crime.

Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can he escape
blame for such a decision ! A young man, at this day,
in this land, who can coolly purpose a life of most un-

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 99

manly guile, who ineans to earn his bread and fame
by a sacrifice of integrity, is one who requires only
temptation and opportunity to become a felon. What a
heart has that man, who can stand in the very middle of
the Bible, with its transcendent truths raising their glow-
ing fronts on every side of him, and feel no inspiration
but that of immorality and meanness! He knows that
for him have been founded the perpetual institutions
of religion, for him prophets have spoken, miracles
been wrought, heaven robbed of its Magistrate, and
the earth made sacred above all planets as the Re-
deemers burial-place, — he knows it all, and plynges from
this height to the very bottom of corruption ! He hears
that he is immortal, and despises the immortality ; that
he is a son of God, and scorns the dignity ; an heir of
heaven, and infamously sells his heirship, and himself, for
a contemptible mess of loathsome pottage ! Do not tell
me of any excuses. It is a shame to attempt an excuse !
If there were no religion, if that vast sphere, out of
which glow all the supereminent truths of the Bible, was
a mere emptiness and void, yet, methinks, the very idea
of Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws
and Liberties of a great people, would enkindle such a
high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be
consumed ! But if the love of country, a sense of char-
acter, a manly regard for integrity, the example of our
most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all its
solicitations, and the prospect of the future, — dark as
Perdition to the bad, and light as Paradise to the good, —
cannot inspire a young man to any thing higher than a
sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent

100 PORTRAIT GALLERY.

lias never felt one sensation of manly virtue ; — it is be-
cause his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to
innocence, but a lair to wild beasts.

Thus have I sketched a few of the characters which
abound in every community ; dangerous, not more by
their direct temptations, than by their insensible influ-
ence. The sight of their deeds, of their temporary suc-
cess, their apparent happiness, relaxes the tense rigidity
of a scrupulous honesty, inspires a ruinous liberality of
sentiment toward vice, and breeds the iJiovghts of evil ;
and EVIL THOUGHTS are the cockatrice's eggs, hatching
into all bad deeds.

Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to ruin,
you will have to bear it alone ! They are strong to
seduce, but heartless to sustain their victims. They will
exhaust your means, teach you to despise the God of
your fathers, lead you into every sin, go with you while
vou afibrd them any pleasure or profit, and then, when
the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins to over-
whelm you, they will abandon whom they have debauch-
ed. When, at length, death gnaws at your bones and
knocks at your heart; when staggering, and worn out,
vour courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity, and
long, long ago your peace — will he who first enticed
vour steps, now^ serve your extremity with one ofiice of
kindness ? Will he stay your head ? — cheer your dying
agony with One word of hope ? — or light the way for
your coward steps to the grave ? — or w^eep when you
are gone ? — or send one pitiful scrap to your desolate
family ? What reveller wears crape for a dead drunk-
ard ? — what gang of gamblers ever intermitted a game
for the death of a companion 1 — or went on kind mis-

PORTRAIT GALLERY. 101

sions of relief to broken-down fellow gamblers 1 What
liarlot weeps for a iiarlot ? — what debauchee mourns for
a debauchee 1 They would carouse at your funeral, and
gamble on your coffin. If one flush more of pleasure
were to be had by it, they would drink shame and ridi-
cule to your memory out of your own skull, and roar in
bacchanal-revelry over your damnation ! All the shame-
less atrocities of wicked men are nothing to their heart-
k'smess toward each other when broken-down. As I
l^ave seen worms writhing on a carcass, overcrawling
each other, and elevating their fiery heads in petty fero-
city against each other, while all were enshrined in the
corruption of a common carrion, — I have thought, ah !
shameful picture of wicked men tempting each other, abet-
ting each other, until calamity overtook them, and then
fighting and devouring or abandoning each other, with-
out pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or remorse. Evil
men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you
on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity
you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in
the universe.

My S071, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they
say, Come with us, . . . ive shall find all precious sub-
stance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot
among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not
thou in the way with them; refrain thy feet from their
path: for their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed
blood, . . . and they lay in ivait for their own blood,
thetj lurk privily for their own lives. «

a Prov. i. 10—10.

LECTURE V.

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments
and made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now
the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout. They
said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lot's
for it, whose it shall be. These things therefore the soldiers did.

I HAVE condensed into one account the separate parts
of this gambling transaction as narrated by each evan-
gelist. How marked in every age is a Gambler's charac-
ter ! The enraged priesthood of ferocious sects taunted
Christ's dying agonies ; the bewildered multitude, accus-
tomed to cruelty, could shout ; but no earthly creature,
but a Gambler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit
down coolly under a dying man to wrangle for his gar-
ments, and arbitrate their avaricious differences by cast-
ing dice for his tunic, with hands spotted with his spat-
tered blood, warm and yet undried upon them. The
descendants of these patriarchs of gambling, however,
have taught us, that there is nothing possible to hell,
uncongenial to these, its elect saints. In this lecture it
is my disagreeable task to lead your steps down the dark
path to their cruel haunts, there to exhibit their infernal
passions, their awful ruin, and their ghastly memorials.

104 GAMBLERS

In lliis house of darkness amid fierce faces gleaming with
the fire of fiercer hearts, amid oaths and groans and
fiendish orgies, ending in murders and strewn with swel-
tering corpses, — do not mistake, and suppose yourself
in Hell — you are only in its precincts and vestibule.

Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon
mere hazard. Tlie husbandman renders produce for
his gains ; the mechanic renders the product of labor
and skill for his gains ; the gambler renders for his
gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, down-
right cheating. Betting is gambling ; there is no hon-
est equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks
are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its w^orst
evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of
dice, cards, or hazard. When skill returns for its earn-
ings a useful service, as knowledge, beneficial amuse-
ments, or profitable labor, it is honest commerce.
The skill of a pilot in threading a narrow channel, the
skill of the lawyer in threading a still more intricate
one, are as substantial equivalents for a price received,
as if they were merchant-goods or agricultural products.
But all gains of jnere skill which result in no real benefit,
are gambling gains.

Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our nature,
has, in some form, probably existed in every age. We
trace it in remote periods and among the most barbarous
people. It loses none of its fliscinations among a civilized
people. On the contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants.

AND GAMBLING. 105

the jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of wealth,
seem to invite this master-excitant. Our land, not apt
to be behind in good or evil, is full of gambling in all its
forms — the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets
and wagers, and the gambling of games of hazard.
There is gambling in refined circles, and in the low-
est ; among the members of our national government,
and of our state-governments. Thief gambles with thief,
in jail ; the judge who sent them there, the lawyer who
prosecuted, and the lawyer who defended them, gamble
too. In many circuits, not long ago, and in some now,
the judge, the jury, and the bar, shuflled cards by night,
and law by day — dealing out money and justice alike.
The clatter of dice and cards disturb your slumber on
the boat, and ring drowsily from the upper rooms of
the hotel. This vice pervades the city, extends over
every line of travel, and infests the most moral districts.
The secreted lamp dimly lights the apprentices to their
game ; with unsuspected disobedience, boys creep out
of their beds to it; it goes on in the store close by the
till ; it haunts the shop. The scoundrel in his lair, the
scholar in his room ; the pirate on his ship, gay women
at parties ; loafers in the street-corner, public functiona-
ries in their offices ; the beggar under the hedge, the
rascal in prison, and some professors of religion in the
somnolent hours of the Sabbath, — waste their energies
by the ruinous excitement of the game. Besides these
players, there are troops of professional gamblers, troops
of hangers on, troops of youth to be drawn in. An m-
experienced eye would detect in our peaceful towns no
signs of this vulture-flock ; — so in a sunny day when all
cheerful birds are singing merrily, not a buzzard can be

106 GAMBLERS

seen ; but let a carcass drop, and they will push forth
their gaunt heads from their gloomy roosts, and come
flapping from the dark woods to speck the air, and dot
the ground with their numbers.

The universal prevalence of this vice is a reason for
parental vigilance ; and a reason of remonstrance from
the citizen, the parent, the minister of the gospel, the
patriot, and the press. I propose to trace its opening,
describe its subjects, and detail its ejects.

A young man proud of freedom, anxious to exert his
manhood, has tumbled his Bible and sober books and
letters of counsel into a dark closet. He has learned
various accomplishments, to flirt, to boast, to swear, to
fight, to drink. He has let every one of these chains be
put around him, upon the solemn promise of Satan that
he would take them olV whenever he wished. Hearing
of the artistic feats of eminent gambiers, he emulates
them. So, he ponders the game ; to-day, he has learned
I'-hist; to-morrow, iz-a^-; Siiiuvday, bluj' ; and Sunday,
poker. He teaches what lie has learned to his shop-
mates, and feels himself their master. As yet he has
never played for stakes. It begins thus : Peeping into a
book-store, he watches till the sober customers go out ;
then slips in, and with assumed boldness, not concealing
his shame, he asks for cards, buys them, and hastens out.
The first game is to pay for the cards. After the relish
of playing for a stake, no game can satisfy them xoiihout
a stake. A few nuts are staked ; then a bottle of wine;
an oyster-supper. At last they can venture a sixpence in
(/dual money — just for the amusement of it. I need go no
fji-ther — whoever wishes to do any thing with the lad,
can do it now. If properly plied, and gradually led, he will

A N D G A M E L I N G . 107

go to any length, and stop only at the gallows. Do yoa
doubt it ? let us trace him a year or two further on.

With his fathers blessing, and his mother's tears, the
young man departs from home. He has received his
patrimony, and embarks for life and independence.
Upon his journey he rests at a city ; visits the 'school
of morals ;' lingers in more suspicious places ; is seen
by a sharper, and makes his acquaintance. The knave
sits by him at dinner ; gives him the news of the place,
and a world of advice ; cautions him against sharpers ;
enquires if he has money, and charges him to keep it
secret; offers himself to make with him the rounds of
the town, and secure him from imposition. At length,
that he may see all, he is taken to a gaming-house, but,
with apparent kindness, warned not to play. He stands
by to see the various fortunes of the game ; some, for-
ever losing ; some, touch what number they will, gain-
ing piles of gold. Looking is thirst where wine is
free. A glass is taken ; another of a better kind ; next
the best the landlord has, and two glasses of that. A
change comes over the youth ; his exhilaration raises
hisl courage, and lulls his caution. Gambling seen^
seems a different thing from gambling paintec^ by a
pious father ! Just then his friend remarks that one
might easily double his money by a few ventures,
but that it was, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only
this was needed to fire his mind. What ! only pru-
dence between me and gain ? Then that shall not
be long ! He stakes ; he wins. Stakes again ; wins
again. Glorious ! I am the lucky man that is to break
the bank ! He stakes, and wins again. His pulse
races ; his face burns ; his blood is up, and fear gone.

108 GAMBLERS

He loses ; loses again ; loses all his winnings ; loses
more. But fortune turns again ; he wins anew. He
has now lost all self-command. Gains excite him, and
losses excite him more. He doubles his stakes ; then
trebles them — and all is swept. He rushes on, puts up
his whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then he would
borrow ; no man will lend. He is desperate, he will
fio-ht at a word. He is led to the street, and thrust out.
The cool breeze which blows upon his fevered cheek,
wafts the slow and solemn stroke of the clock, — one, —
tvvo, — three, — four; four of the morning! Quick work
of ruin !— an innocent man destroyed in a night ! He
stafTc^ers to his Hotel, remembers as he enters it, that he
has not even enough to pay his bill. It now flashes
upon him that his friend, who never had left him for an
hour before, has stayed behind where his money is, and,
doubtless, is laughing over his spoils. His blood boils
with rage. But at length comes up the remembrance of
home ; a parent's training and counsels for more than
twenty years, destroyed in a night ! " I have gambled
away my money and my salvation ! I have broken my
old father's heart ! Good God ! what a wretch 1 have
been ! I am not fit to live. 1 cannot go home. I am
a stranger here. Oh ! that I were dead ! Oh ! that I
had died before I knew this guilt, and were lying where
my sister lies ! Oh God ! Oh God ! my head will burst
with agony !" He stalks his lonely room with an agony
which only the young heart knows in its first horrible
awakening to remorse— when it looks despair full in the
face, and feels its hideous incantations tempting him
to suicide. Subdued at length by agony, cowed and
weakened by distress, he is sought again by those who

AND GAMBLING. 109

plucked him. Canning to subvert inexperience, to raise
the evil passions, and to allny the good, they nnake him
their pliant tool.

Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps turned to that
haunt again ! I see hope lighting thy face ; but it is a
lurid light, and never came from heaven. Stop before
that threshold ! — turn, and bid farewell to home ! — fare-
well to innocence ! — farewell to venerable lather and
aged mother ! — the next step shall part thee from them
all forever. And now henceforth be a mate to thieves,
a brother to corruption. Thou hast made a league with
death, and unto death shalt thou go.

Let us here pause, to draw the likeness of a few
who stand conspicuous in that vulgar ci'owd of gam-
blers, with which hereafter he will consort. The first
is a taciturn, quiet man. No one knows when he
comes into town, or when he leaves. No man hears
of his gaining ; for he never boasts, nor reports his
luck. He spends little for parade ; his money seems
to go and come only through the game. He re?ds
none, converses none, is neither a glutton nor a hard
drinker ; he sports few ornaments, and wears plain cloth-
ing. Upon the whole, he seems a gentlemanly man ;
and sober citizens say, " his only fault is gambling."
What then is this '''•only fault?"' In his heart he has
the most intense and consuming lust of play. He is
quiet because every passion is absorbed in one ; and
that one burning at the highest flame. He thinks of
nothing else, cares only for this. All other things, even
the hottest lusts of other men, are too cool to be temp-
tations to him ; so much deeper is the style of his pas-
sion. He will sit upon his chair, and no man shall sec
10

110 GAJIBLERS

liim move for hours, except to play his cards. He sees
none come in, none go out. Death might groan on one
side of the room, and marriage might sport on the other,
— he would know neither. Every created influence is
shut out ; one thing only moves him — the game; and
that leaves not one pulse of excitability unaroused, but
stirs his soul to the very dregs.

Very different is the roistering gamester. He bears
a jolly face, a glistening eye something watery through
watching and drink. His fingers are manacled in rings ;
his bosom glows with pearls and diamonds. He learns
the time which he wastes from a magnificent watch full
gorgeously carved, (and not with the most modest scenes.)
and slung around his neck by a ponderous golden chain.
His dress is richer than the richest wear. When he is
in luck, you may count his coats a dozen, his vests a
score, his stocks and cravats innumerable. There is
not so splendid a fellow to be seen sweeping through the
streets. The landlord makes him welcome — he will
bear a full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he will
buy half his shop. Other places bid him welcome — he
will bear large stealings.

Like the Judge, he makes his circuit, but not for jus-
tice ; like the Preacher, he has his appointments, but not
for instruction. His circuits are the race-courses, the
crowded capital, days of general convocation, conven-
tions, and mass-gatherings. He will flame on the race-
track, bet his thousands, and beat the ring at swearing
oaths vernacular, imported, simple, or compound. The
drinking-booth smokes when he draws in his welcome
suit. Did you see him only by day, flaming in apparel,
jovial, and free-hearted at the Restaurateur or Hotel,

ANDGAMBLING. Ill

you would think him a Prince let loose — a cross between
Prince Hal and FalslafI'.

But night is his day. These are mere exercises, and
brief prefaces to his real accomplishments. He is a
good fellow, who dares play deeper; he is wild indeed,
who seems wilder ; and he is keen indeed, who is shar-
per than he is, after all this show of frankness. No one
is quicker, slyer, and more alert at a game. He can
shuffle the pack till an honest man would as soon think
of looking, for a particular drop of water in the ocean,
as for a particular card in any particular place. Per-
haps he is ignorant which is at the top and which at the
bottom ! At any rate, watch him closely, or you will
get a lean hand and he a fat one. A plain man would
think him a wizzard or the devil. When he touches a
pack they seem alive, and acting to his will rather than
his touch. He deals them like lightning, they rain like
snow-flakes, sometimes one, sometimes two, if need be
four and five together, and his hand hardly moved. If
he loses, very well, he laughs ; if he gains, he only
laughs a little more. Full of stories, full of songs, full
of wit, full of roistering spirit — yet do not trespass too
much upon his good nature with insult ! All this out-
side is only the spotted hide which covers the tiger.
He who provokes this man, shall see what lightning can
break out of a summer-seeming cloud !

These do not fairly represent the race of gamblers, —
conveying too favorable an impression. Tiiere is one,
often met on Steam-boats, travelling solely to gamble.
He has the servants, or steward, or some partner, in
league with him, to iieece every unwary player whom
he inveifjiles to a game. He deals falsely ; heats his

112 GAMBLERS

dupe to madness by drink, drinking none himself;
watches the signals of liis accomplice telegraphing his
opponent's hand ; at a stray look, he will slip your
money olf and steal it. To cover false playing or to get
rid of paying losses ho will lie fiercely, and swear uproar-
iously, and break up the play to fight with knife or pistol
— first scraping the table of every penny. When the
passengers are asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see
what may be worth stealing ; he pulls a watch from
under the pillow of one sleeper ; fumbles in the pockets
of another ; and gathers booty throughout the cabin.
Leaving the boat before morning, he appears at some
village hotel, a magnificent gentleman, a polished trav-
eller, or even a distinguished nobleman !

There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, stealthy,
humble, mousing, and mean — a simple bloodsucker. For
money, he will be a tool to other gamblers ; steal for
them, and from them ; he plays the jackall, and searches
victims for them, humbly satisfied to pick the bones
aftervt^ard. Thus, (to employ his own language) he ropes
in the inexperienced young, flatters them, teaches them,
inflames their passions, purveys to their appetites, cheats
them, debauches them, draws them down to his own
level, and then lords it over them in malignant mean-
ness. Himself impure, he plunges others into lascivious-
ness ; and with a train of reaking satellites, he revolves
a few years in the orbit of the game, the brothel, and
the doctor's shop ; then sinks and dies : the world is
purer, and good men thank God that he is gone.

Beside these, time would fail me to describe the inefl'a-
ble dignity of a gambling judge ; the cautious, phlegmatic
lawyer, gamblinjr from sheer avarice : the broken-down

A N IJ G A M B L I N G . 113

and cast-away politician, seeking in the game the needed
excitement, and a fair field for all the base tricks he once
played oiT as a patriot ; the pert, sharp, keen, jockey-
gambler ; the soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, baccha-
nal ; and a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all the
badges and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage.

A detail of the e-vils of gambling should be preceded
by an illustration of that constitution of mind out of
which they mainly spring — ■! mean its KxcrrABinTY.
The body is not stored with a fixed amount of strength,
nor the mind with a uniform measure of excitement;
but both are capable, by stimulation, of expansion of
strength or feeling, almost without limit. Experience
shows, that within certain bounds, excitement is healthful
and necessary ; but beyond this limit, exhausting and
destructive. Men are allowed to choose between mode-
rate but long-continued excitement, and intense but
short-lived excitement. Too generally they prefer the
latter. To gain this intense thrill, a thousand methods
are tried. The inebriate obtains it by drink and drugs ;
the politician, by the keen interest of the civil cam-
paign; the young, by amusements which violently in-
flame and gratify their appetites. When once this
higher flavor of stimulus has been tasted, all that is less
becomes vapid and disgustful. A sailor tries to live on
shore ; a few weeks suffice. To be sure, there is no
hardships, or cold, or suflering ; but neither is there the
strong excitement of the ocean, the gale, the storm, and
the world of strange sights. The politician perceives that
his private affairs are deranged, his family neglected, his
character aspersed, his feelings exacerbated. When
men hear him confess that his career is a hideous wak-
10-

114 GAMBLERS

ing dream, the race vexatious, and the end vanity, they
wonder that he clings to it ; but he knows that nothing
but the fiery wine which he has tasted will rouse up that
intense excitement, now become necessary to his hap-
piness. For this reason, great men often cling to public
office with all its envy, jealousy, care, toil, hates, compe-
titions, and unrequited fidelity ; for these very disgusts,
and the perpetual struggle, strike a deeper cord of ex-
citement than is possible to the gentler touches of home,
friendship, and love. Here too is the key to the real
evil of promiscuous novel-reading, to the habit of reve-
rie and mental romancing. None of life's common du-
ties can excite to such wild pleasure as these ; and they
must be continued, or the mind reacts into the lethargy
of fatigue and ennui. It is upon this principle that men
love 7Jai« ; suffering is painful to a spectator; but in trag-
edies, at public executions, at pugilistic combats, at cock-
fightings, horse-races, bear-baitings, bull-fights, gladiato-
rial shows, it excites a jaded mind as nothing else can.
A tyrant torments for the same reason that a girl reads
her tear-bedewed romance, or an inebriate drinks his
dram. No longer susceptible even to inordinate stimuli,
actual moans, and shrieks, and the writhing of utter
agony, just suffice to excite his worn out sense, and
inspire, probably, less emotion than ordinary men have
in listening to a tragedy or reading a bloody novel.

Gambling is founded upon the very worst perversion
of this powerful element of our nature. It heats every
. part of the mind like an oven. The faculties which pro-
duce calculation, pride of skill, of superiority, love of
gain, hope, fear, jealousy, hatred, are absorbed in the
game, and exhilarated, or exacerbated by victory or

AND GAMBLING. 115

defeat. These passions are, doubtless, excited in men
by the daily occurrences of life ; but then they are
transient, and counteracted by a thousand grades of
emotion, which rise and fall like the undulations of the
sea. But in gambling there is no intermission, nor coun-
teraction. The whole mind is excited to the utmost,
and concentrated at its extreme point of excitation for
hours and days, with the additional waste of sleepless
nights, profuse drinking, and other congenial immorali-
ties. Every other pursuit becomes tasteless ; for no
ordinary duty has in it a stimulus which can scorch a
mind which now refuses to burn without blazing, or to
feel an interest which is not intoxication. The victim
of excitement is like a mariner who ventures into the
edge of a whirlpool for a motion more exhilarating than
plain sailing. He is unalarmed during the first few
gyrations, for escape is easy. But each turn sweeps
him further in ; the power augments, the speed becomes
terrific as he rushes toward the vortex, all escape now-
hopeless. A noble ship went in ; it is spit out in broken
fragments, splintered spars, crushed masts, and cast up
for many a rood along the shore. The specific evils of
gambling may now be almost imagined.

I. It diseases the mind, unfiting it for the duties of
life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful
vocation. A gambling mechanic finds his labor less
relishful as his passion for play increases. lie grows
unsteady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to prom-
ises ; what he performs he slights. Little jobs seem
little enough ; he desires immense contracts, whose un-
certainty has much the excitement of gambling — and for
the best of reasons ; and in the pursuit of great and sud-

116 GAMBLERS

den profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin,
leaving all who employed or trusted him in the rubbish
of his speculations.

A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his-
profession, will court .its exciting duties. To explore
authorities, compare reason, digest, and write, — this is
tiresome. But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests
\vith keen opponents, this is nearly as good as gambling.
Many a ruined client has cursed the law, and cursed a
stupid jury, and cursed every body for his irretrievable
loss, except his lawyer, who gambled all night when he
should have prepared the case, and came half asleep and
debauched into court in the morning to lose a good case
mismanaged, and snatched from his gambling hands by
the art of sober opponents.

A gambling student, if such a thing can be, withdraws
from thoughtful authors to the brilliant and spicy ; from
the pure among these, to the sharp and ribald ; from all
reading about depraved life, to seeing ; from sight, to ex-
perience. Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the
tastes, destroys the industry — for no man will drudge for
cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred ; or prac-
tice a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indiffer-
ence, he makes or loses five hundred in a night.

11. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits
and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gam-
bler ; thiere is no air there that he can breathe. For a
moment he may sport w^ith his children, and smile upon
iiis wife ; but his heart, its strong passions, are not
there. A little branch-rill may flow through the family,
but the deep river of his aflections flows away from
home. On the issue of a game, Tacitus narrates that the

A N 11 G A M B L I N G . 117

ancient Germans would stake their property, their wiv^es,
their children, and themselves. What less than this is
it, wiien a man will stake that properly which is to give
his family bread, and that honor which gives them place
and rank in society ?

When playing becomes desperate gamblings the heart
is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have
smouldered to ashes ; and a thorough-paced gamester
could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his
stakes amid murder, and pocket gold dripping with the
blood of his own kindred.

III. Gambling is the parent and companion of every
vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society.

It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so
excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious
and thriving men, that those who practice it are shut
up to themselves ; unlike lawful pursuits, it is not
modified or restrained by collision with others. Gam-
blers herd with gamblers. They tempt and provoke
each other to all evil, without aflbrding one restraint,
and without providing the counterbalance of a single
virtuous impulse. They are like snakes coiling among
snakes, poison and poisoning ; like plague-patients, in-
fected and diftusing infection ; each sick, and all conta-
gious. It is impossible to put bad men together and not
have them grow worse. The herding of convicts pro-
miscuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity,
that, long ago, legislators forbad it. When criminals, out
of jail, herd together by choice, the same corrupt nature
will doom them to growing loathsomeness, because to
increasing wickedness.

IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is al-

118 GAMBLERS

most as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some
are seduced to drink ; some drink from imitation, at first,
and fashion. When super-excitements, at intervals, sub-
side, their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the
reaction ; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system
to the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the in-
variable concomitant of the theatre, circus, race-course,
gaming-table ; and of amusements which powerfully ex-
cite all but the moral feelings. When the double fire of
dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be con-
sumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are
the more noticeable because exceptions.

V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevita-
ble cause of dishonedy. Robbers have robbers' honor ;
thieves have thieves' law ; and pirates conform to pirates'
regulations. But where is there a gam.bler's code? One
law there is, and this not universal, j>ay your gamhling
debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to win —
what law is there ? What will shut a man out from a
gambler's club ? May he not discover his opponent's
hand by fraud ? May not a concealed thread, pulling
the significant one; — one, tico; — or one, two, three; or the
sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inforni him, and yet
his standing be fair ? May he not cheat in shuHling, and
yet be in full orders and canonical? — may he not cheat
in dealing, and yet be a welcome gambler ? — may he
not steal the money from your pile by laying his hands
upon it, just as any other thief would, and yet be an
approved gambler? JMay not the whole code be stated
thus : Pay ivhat you lose, get what you can, and in any
icay you can ! I am told, perhaps, that there are honest
gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly ; there are

A X n GAM]

119

always ripe apples before t'lere are rotten. Men al-
ways begin before they end; there is always an approxi-
mation before tliere is contact. Players will play truly
till they get used to playing untruly ; will be honest, till
they cheat; will be honorable, till they become base;
and when you have said all this, what does it amount to
but this, that men who 7-eaUy gamble, really cheat ; and
that they only do not cheat, who are not yet real gam-
blers ? If this mends the matter, let it be so amended. I
have spoken of gamesters only among themselves ; this
is the least part of the evil ; for who is concerned when
lions destroy bears, or wolves devour wolf-cubs, or
snakes sting vipers ? In respect to that department of
gambling which includes the roping-in of strangers,
young men, collecting-clerks, and unsuspecting green-
hands, and robbing them, I have no language strong
enough to mark down its turpitude, its infernal rapacity.
After hearing many of the scenes not unfamiliar to
every gambler, I think Satan might be proud of their
dealings, and look up to them with that deferential res-
pect, with which one monster gazes upon a superior.
There is not even the expectation of honesty. Some
scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the unwary wretch
into the secret room ; he is tempted to drink ; made con-
fident by the specious simplicity of the game ; allowed to
win; and every bait and lure and blind is employed —
then he is plucked to the skin by tricks which appear as
fair as honesty itself. The robber avows his deed, does
it openly ; the gambler sneaks to the same result under
skulking pretences. There is a frank way, and a mean
way of doing a wicked thing. The gambler takes
the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The vie-

120 GAMBLERS

tim's own partner is sucking his blood ; it is a league ot"
sharpers, to get iiis money at any rate ; and the wicked-
ness is so unblushing and unmitigated, that it gives, at
last, an instance of what the deceiti'ul human heart,
knavish as it is, is ashamed to try to cover or conceal ;
but confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud,
cheating, stealing, robbery,— -and nothing else.

If I walk the dark street, and a perishing, hungry
wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a sin-
gle dollar, the whole town awakes ; the officers are alert,
the myrmidons of the law scout, and scent, and hunt,
and bring in the trembling culprit to stow him in the
jail. But a worse thief may meet me, decoy my steps,
and by a greater dishonesty, filch ten thousand dollars, —
and what then ? The story spreads, the sharpers move
abroad unharmed, no one stirs. It is the day's conver-
sation ; and like a sound it rolls to the distance, and dies
in an echo.

Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out amidst
us, and no man care ? Do we love our children, and yet
let them walk in a den of vipers ? Shall we pretend to
virtue, and purity, and religion, and yet make partners
of our social life, men whose heart has conceived such
damnable deeds, and whose hands have performed them ?
Shall there be even in the eye of religion, no difference
between the corruptor of youth and their guardian ?
Are all the lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the
nerve and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency
and boldness of flagitious crimes, that men, covered
over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no obstacle
to their advancement among a Christian people ?

In almost every form of iniquity there is some shade

AND GAMBLING. 121

or trace of good. We have in gambling a crime stand-
ing alone — dark, malignant, uncompounded wickedness !
It seems in its full growth a monster without a ten-
der mercy, devouring its own ofispring without one
feeling but appetite. If the genius of gambling would
have a form, God must create it ; for there is no form
yet fitly created unless it be a rock, — cold, hard, barren,
unsoftened by rain, unrelieved by verdure. A game-
ster, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential sj)i7^ii of con-
centrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect is a living
thing, quickened with double life for villainy ; his heart is
steel of fourfold temper. When a man begins to gamble
he is as a noble tree full of sap, green with leaves, a
shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. When one be-
comes a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning-
smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless ;
-seasoned hard and tough ; nothing lives beneath it,
nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture
perches for a moment to whet its becik, and fly scream-
ing away for its prey.

To every young man who indulges in the leas't form
of gambling, I raise a warning voice ! Under the spe-
cious name of amusement, you are laying the foundation
of gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gam-
bling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm.
It is the white frost which preludes the winter. You
are mistaken, however, in supposing that it is harmless
in its earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs,
doubtless, to a later stage ; but its consumption of time,
its destruction of industry, its distaste for the calmer
pleasures of life, belong to the very beginning. You
will begin to play with every generous feeling. Amuse-
11

122 GAMBLERS

ment will be the plea. At the beginning the game will
excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and
the love of money. The love of money at first almost
imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest — like
Aaron's rod, — a serpent, swallowing every other ser-
pent. Generosity, enthusiasm, pride of skill, love of
mastery, will be absorbed in one mighty feeling, — the
savage lust of lucre.

There is a downward climax in this sin. The open-
ing and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward
each other with almost irresistable attraction. If gam-
bling is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Mael-
strom. The thousand pcmnd's stake, the whole estate
put up on a game — what are these but the instruments
of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased
heart craves ? What is the amusancnt for which you
play but the excitement of the game ? And for what but
this does the jaded gambler play ? You differ from him
only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace
yourself that you shall escape because others have ; for
they stopped^ and ijou go on. Are you as safe as they, when
you are in the gulf-stream of perdition, and they on the
shore? But have you ever asked, hnw many have escap-
ed ? Not one in a thousand is left unblighted ! you have
nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against you, and
one for you ; and will you go on ? If a disease should
stalk through the town devouring whole families and
sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie down
under it quietly because you had one chance in five hun-
dred ? Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate
your pangs to reflect that you had only one chance in
one hundred 1 Had you swallowed corrosive poison.

AND GAMBLING. 123

would it ease your convulsions to think there was only
one chance in fifty for you ? I do not call every man
who plays a gambler, but a ganibler in embryo. Let me
trace your course from the amusement of innocent play-
ing to its almost inevitable end.

Scene Jirst. A genteel coiTee-house, — whose humane
screen conceals a line of grenadier-bottles, and hides
respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a
quiet little room opening out of the bar ; and here sit
four jovial youths. The cards are out, the wines are in.
The fourth, is a reluctant hand ; he does not love the
drink, nor approve the game. He anticipates and fears
the results of both. Why is he here ? He is a whole-
souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fash-
ionable gaiety. He will sip upon the importunity of a
friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil
that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game.
They sit, shuffle, deal ; the night wears on, the clock
telling no tale of passing hours — the prudent liquor-fiend
has made it safely dumb. The night is gettmg old ; its
dank air grows fresher ; the east is grey ; the gaming
and drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the
youths wending homeward. What says conscience?
No matter what it says ; they did not hear, and we will
not ; for what business has a dashing young gentleman,
in this free country, with a prudish conscience ? What-
ever was said, it was very shortly answered thus : " This
has not been gambling; all were gentlemen ; there was
no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes
except the bills incident to the entertainment. If any
body blames a young man for a little innocent exhilara-
tion on a special occasion, he is a superstitious bigot ;

1 21 GAMBLERS

let him croak !" Such a garnished game is made the
text to justify the whole round of gambling. Let us,
then, look at

Scene the second. In a room so silent that there is no
sound except the shrill cock crowing the morning;
where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long
and lengthening wick, sit four men. Carved marble could
not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watch-
ful though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively
read each others faces. Hours have passed over them
thus. At length they rise without words ; some with a
satisfoction which only makes their faces brightly hag-
gard, scrape ofl' the piles of money ; others, dark, sullen,
silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. The
darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who
first sat down to make out a game ! He will never sit
so innocently again. What says he to his conscience
now ? "I have a right to gamble ; I have a right to be
damned too, if I choose ; whose business is it ?"

Scene the thinh Years have passed on. He has seen
youth ruined at first with expostulation, then with only
silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils ;
and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped
them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated
house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look
into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting
upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew-
dealing cards smoutched with tobacco, grease and liquor.
One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy ;
a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain
eyes which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket.
Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch,

A N D G A M B L 1 N G . 125

vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard,
and a hurley negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the
group. They have spectators — drunken sailors, and
ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died
long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour
draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, some-
times with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few
stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each
with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows ; and
the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting,
scratching, and rolling over and over in the dirt and
dust. The worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four
is our friend who began by making up the game !

Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, stand with me,
if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that mul-
titude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hung !
At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch.
At the gallow's ladder his courage fails, drunk though he
be. His coward-feet refuse to ascend : dragged up, he
is supported by bustling officials ; his brain reels, his eye
swims, while the meek Minister utters a final prayer by
his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed,
the signal is given ; a shudder runs through the crowd
as he swings free. After a moment, his convulsed limbs
stretch down, and hang heavily and still ; and he who
began to gamble to make up a game and ended with
stabbing an eni'aged victim whom he had fleeced, has
here played his last game, — himself the stake !

I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of all
sober citizens to some potent influences which are ex-
erted in favor of gambling.

In our civil economy we have Legislators to devise
11*

126 GAMBLF. RS

and enact wholesome laws ; Lawyers to counsel and aid
those who need the laws' relief; and Judges to deter-
mine and administer the laws. If Legislators, Lawyers,
and Judges, are gamblers, with what hope do we warn
otF the young from this deadly fascination, against such
authoritative examples of high public functionaries ?
With what eminent fitness does that Judge press the
bench, who in private commits the vices which offi-
cially he is set to condemn ! With what singular
terrors does he frown on a convicted gambler with
whom he played last night, and will play again to-night !
How wisely should the fine be light which the sprightly
criminal will win and pay out of the Judge's own pocket !

With the name of Judge is associated ideas of immac-
ulate purity, sober piety, and fearless, favorless justice.
Let ii then be counted a dark crime for a recreant offi-
cial so far to forget his reverend place, and noble office,
as to run the gauntlet of filthy vices, and make the word
Judge, to suggest an incontinent trifler, who smites with
his mouth, and smirks with his eye ; who holds the rod
to strike the criminal, and smites only the law to make
a gap for criminals to pass through ! If God loves this
land, may he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing,
gambling, vicious Judges ! *

With such Judges I must associate corrupt legisla-
tors, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all the sinks
of infamy of the Capital. These living exemplars of
vice, pass still-born laws against vice. Are such men

^The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestiona'ole —
and no remari<8 in the text are to be construed as an oblique aspersion
of the profession. But the purer our Judges generally, the more
shameless is it that some will not abandon either their vices or their
office. No vice is worse than gambling.

AND GAMBLING,

127

sent to the Capital only to practice debauchery 1 Labo-
rious seedsmen — they gather every germ of evil ; and
laborious sowers — at home they strew them far and
wide ! It is a burning shame, a high outrage, that pub-
lic men, by corrupting the young with the example of
manifold vices, should pay back their constituents for
their honors !

Our land has little to fear from abroad, and much from
within. We can bear foreign aggression, scarcity, the
revulsions of commerce, plagues, and pestilences ; but
we cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt Courts, gambling
Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, and gambling con-
stituency. Let us not be deceived ! The decay of civil
institutions begins at the core. The outside wears all
the lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside is rotting.
DecUne does not begin in bold and startling acts ; but,
as in autumnal leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over
diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush,
a brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public
sentiment declare that personal morality, is the first ele-
ment of patriotism; that corrupt Legislators are the most
pernicious of criminals ; that the Judge who lets the vil-
lain off, is that villain's patron; that tolerance of crime is
intolerance of virtue, — our nation might defy all ene-
mies and live forever !

And now, my young friends, I beseecii you to let alone
this evil before it be meddled with. You are safe from
vice when you avoid even its appearance ; and only
then. The first steps to wickedness are imperceptible.
We do not wonder at the inexperience of Adam ; but it
is wonderful that six thousand years' repetition of the
same arts, and the same uniform disaster should have

128 GAMBLERS

taught men nothing! that generation after generation
should perish, and the wreck be no warning !

The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks,
stands oir from perilous shoals, and steers wide of reefs
on which liang shattered morsels of wrecked ships, and
runs in upon dangerous shores with the ship manned,
the wheel in hand, and the lead constantly sounding.
But the mariner upon life's sea, carries no chart of other
men's voyages, drives before every wind that will speed
him, draws upon horrid shores with slumbering crew,
or heads in upon roaring reefs as though he would not
perish where thousands have perished before him.

Hell is populated with the victims of '■^harmkss amuse-
7?ic7its:' Will man never learn that the way to hell is
through the valley of deceit ? The power of Satan to
hold his victims is nothing to that mastery of art by
which he first gains them. When he approaches to
charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid
cloud, but as an angel of light radiant with innocence.
His words fidl like dew upon the flower; as musical as
the chrystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled
by his art, he leads you to the enchanted grounds. Oh
how it glows with every refulgent hue of Heaven !
Afar off he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime ; its
smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever ! and
he himself cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for
the very purpose of blinding and drawing you thither.
He leads you to captivity through all the bowers of lull-
ing magic. He plants your foot on odorous flowers ; he
fans your cheek with balmy breath ; he overhangs your
head with rosy clouds ; he fills your ear with distant,
drowsy music, charming every sense to rest. Oh ye !

AND GAMBLING.

129

who have thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen
as Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed like
Golgotha with bones and skulls, reaking with stench
like the vale of Gehenna, — witness your mistake ! The
way to hell is gorgeous ! It is a highway, cast up ; no
lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no
echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant
fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe ! Paradise is
imitated to build you a way to death : the flowers of
heaven are stolen and poisoned ; the sweet plant of
knowledge is here ; the pure white flower of religion ;
seeming virtue and the charming tints of innocence are
scattered all along like native herbage. The enchanted
victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a
silver-trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the
wind a solemn warning: There is a way which seemeth

RIGHT TO man, BUT THE END THEREOF IS DEATH. And

again, with louder blast : The wise man foreseeth the
EVIL ; FOOLS PASS ON AND ARE PUNISHED. Startled for a
moment, the victim pauses; gazes round upon the flow-
ery scene, and whispers, Is it not harmless? — '•'•Harm-
less'''' responds a serpent from the grass! — ^'•Harmless''''
echo the sighing winds! — '•^Harmless'''' re-echoes a hun-
dred airy tongues ! If now a gale from heaven might
only sweep the clouds away through which the victim
gazes ; oh ! if God would break that potent power which
chains the blasts of hell, and let the sulpher-stench roll
up the vale, how would the vision change ! — the road be-
come a track of dead men's bones ! — the heavens a lower-
ing storm ! — the balmy breezes, distant wailings ! — and all
those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops
of blood upon their poison-boughs !

130 GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING.

Ye, who are meddling with the edges of vice, aix'
ou tliis road ! — and utterly duped by its enchant-
ments ! Your eye has already lost its honest glance,
your taste has lost its purity, your lieart throbs with
poison ! The leprosy is all over you, its blotches and
eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slippei-y
places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you re-
fuse the warning which I raise. They shall slide from
heaven, never to be visited by a gambler ; slide down t(»
that fiery abyss below you, out of which none ever
come. Then, when the last card is cast, and the game
over, and you lost ; then, when the echo of your fall
shall ring through hell, — in malignant triumph, shall the
Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played for your soul, have
his prey ! Too late you shall look back upon life as a
MIGHTY GAME, in which you were the stake, and Satan the
w inner !

LECTURE VI.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc-
trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness :
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all
good works. 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.

Surely one cannot declare the whole counsel of God,
and leave out a subject which is interwoven with almost
every ciiapter of the Bible. So inveterate is the preju-
dice against introducing into the pulpit the subject of
Licentiousness, that Ministers of the Gospel, knowing the
vice to be singularly dangerous and frequent, have yet
by silence almost complete, or broken only by hints and
circuitous allusions, manifested their submission to the
popular taste. Since I announced, last Sabbath, the sub-
ject of this Lecture, how w^ide is the range of censure,
what protestations of modesty, what railings at a sermon
which had not been heard, or even written !* That Vice

* The liberality with which this Lecture was condemned before I had
written it, and the prompt criticisms afterwards, of those who did not
liear it, have induced me to print it almost unaltered. Otherwise I
should have changed many portions of it from forms of expression
peculiar to the pulpit into those better suited to a book. I await with
some solicitude, the effect of this Lecture upon those whose exquisite
sensibility has altogether out run the modesty of the Bible; — a book,
proper, perhaps, for the coarseness of a former age, but it would seem,
quite too indelicate for the refinement of this.

132 THK STRANGE WOMAN.

upon which it has pleased God to be more explicit and
full than upon any other; against which he uttered his
voice upon Sinai, Thou shall not commit adultery ; upon
which the lawgiver, Moses, legislated with boldness ;
which Judges condemned ; upon which the venerable
Prophets spake oft and again ; against which Christ with
singular directness and plainness uttered the purity of
religion ; and upon which He inspired Paul to discourse
to the Corinthians, and to almost every primitive church;
this subject upon which the Bible does not so much
speak, as thunder — not by a single bolt, but peal after
peal — we are solemnly warned not to introduce into
the pulpit !

The church knows, and the whole community know,
that the sin of Impurity ismost deadly ; that itis prevalent ;
and that in every age ijt has raised its unblushing head,
unrebuked except by the voice of Religion: but now, that
voice is commanded to be still ; and Vice, grown wanton
and irrepressible, is to stalk whither it will, unchecked,
undenounced, uncondemned.

I am entirely aware of the delicacy of introducing this
subject into the pulpit.

One ditliculty arises from the sensitiveness of unalfect-
ed purity. A mind, retaining all the dew and freshness
of innocence, shrinks from the very idea of impurity, as
if it were sin to have thought or heard of it, — as if even
the shadow of the evil would leave some soil upon the
unsullied whiteness of the virgin-mind. Shall we be an-
gry with this 1 or shall we rudely rebuke so amiable a
feeling, because it regrets a necessary duty ? God for-
bid ! If there be, in the world, that whose generous
iaults should be rebuked only by the tenderness of a re-

THE STRANGE UOMAN. 133

proving smile, it is the mistake of inexperienced purity.
We would as soon pelt an angel, bewildered among men
and half smothered with earth's noxious vapors, for his
trembling apprehensions. To any such, who have half
wished that I might not speak, I say : — Nor would I, did
I not know that purity will suffer more by the silence of
shame, than by the honest voice of truth.

Another difficulty springs from the nature of the
English language, which lias hardly been framed in a
school where it may wind and fit itself to all the phases
of impurity. But were I speaking French — the dialect
of refined sensualism and of licentious literature ; the
language of a land where taste and learning and art wait
upon the altars of impurity — then I might copiously speak
of this evil, nor use one plain word. But I thank God,
the honest English tongue which I have learned, has
never been so bred to this vile subservience of evil.
We have plain words enough to say plain things, but the
dignity and manliness of our language has never grown
supple to twine around brilliant dissipation. It has too
many plain words, vulgar words, vile words ; but it has
few mirror-words, which cast a sidelong image of an
idea ; it has few words which wear a meaning smile, a
courtezan-glance significant of something unexpressed.
When public vice necessitates public reprehension, it is,
for these reasons, difficult to redeem plainness from vul-
garity. We must speak plainly and properly ; or else
speak by innuendo — which is the devil's language.

Another difficulty lies in the confused echos which

vile men create in every community, when the pulpit

disturbs them. Do I not know the arts of cunning men?

Did not Demetrius, the Silver-smith (worthy to have

12

1 34 T H K S T R A N G E W OMAN.

lived in our day !) become most wonderfully pious, and
run all over the city to rouse up the dormant zeal of
Diana's worshippers, and gather a mob, to whom he
preached tJiat Diana inust he cared for; when, to his
fellow-craftsmen, he told the truth: our craft is in dan-
ger ! Men will not quietly be exposed. They foresee
the rising of a virtuously retributive public sentiment, as
the mariner sees the cloud of the storm- rolling up the
heavens ! Tliey strive to forestall and resist it. How
loudly will a liquor-fiend protest against temperance
lectures — sinful enough for redeeming victims from his
paw ! How sensitive some men to a church bell ! they
are hin'h priests of revivals at a horse-race, a theatre, or
a liquor-supper ; but a religious revival pains their sober
minds. Even thus, the town will be made vocal with
outcries against sermons on licentiousness. Who cries
out? — the sober? — the immaculate? — the devout? It is
the voice of the son of midnight ; it is the shriek of the
STRANGE woman's victim ! and their sensitiveness is not of
purity, but of fear ! Men protest against the indecency
of the pulpit, because the pulpit makes them feel their
own indecency ; they would drive us from the investiga-
tion of vice, that they may keep the field open for their
own occupancy. I expect such men's reproaches. I
know the reasons of them. I am not to be turned by
them, not one hairs breadth, if they rise to double their
present volume, until I have hunted home the wolf to
his lair, and ripped off his brindled hide in his very den !
Another difficulty exists in the criminal fastidiousness
of the community upon this subject. Fastidiousness is
the counterfeit of delicacy. It resembles it less than

THE STRANGE WO M AN. 1 35

paste-jewels do the pure pearl. Where delicacy, the
atmosphere of a pure heart, is lost, or never was had,
a substitute is sought; and is found in forms of deli-
cacy, not in its feelings. It is a delicacy of exterior, of
etiquette, of show, of rules; not o^ thought, not of a pure
imagination.) not of the chrystal-current of the lieart !
Criminal fastidiousness is the Pharisee's sepulchre ; clean,
white, beautiful without, full of dead men's bones with-
in ! — the Pharisees platter, the Pharisee's cup — it is the
very Pharisee himself; and like him of old, lays on bur-
dens grievous to be borne. Fastidiousness is a well
which men's hands have dug, and dug for their own con-
venience. Delicacy is a spring which God lias sunken
in the rock, which the winter never freezes, the summer
never heats ; which sends its quiet waters with music
down the flowery hill-side, and which is pure and trans-
parent, because it lias at the bottom no sediment. I
would that every one of us iiad this well of life, gushing
from our hearts — an everlasting and full stream !

False modesty always judges by the outside ; it
cares how you speak, more than iclial. That which
would outrage in plain woi'ds, may be implied furtive-
ly, in the sallies of wit or fancy, and be admissible.
Every day I see this giggling modesty, which blushes at
language more than at its meaning ; which smiles upon
base things, if they will appear in the garb of virtue !
That disease of mind to which I have frecfaently alluded
in these lectures, which leads it to clothe vice beautifully
and then admit it, has had a fatal effect also upon Litera-
ture ; giving currency to filth, by coining it in the mint of
beauty. It is under the influence of this disease of taste
and heart, that we hear expressed such strange judg-

1 36 THE S T 11 A N G E -WOMAN.

nients upon English authors. Those wlio speak plainly
what they mean, when they speak at all, are called rude

and vulgar ; while those upon whose exquisite sentences
the dew of indelicacy rests like so many brilliant pearls
of the morning upon flowers, are called our moral au-
thors!

The most dangerous writers in the English language
are those whose artful insinuations and mischievous
polish reflect upon the mind the image of impurity, with-
out presenting the impurity itself. A plain vulgarity in
a writer is its own antidote. It is like a foe who attacks
us openly, and gives us opportunity of defence. But
impurity, secreted under beauty, is like a treacherous
friend who strolls with us in a garden of sweets, and
destroys us by the odor of poisonous flowers proffered to
our senses. Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer

* be compared with the perfumed, elaborate brilliancy of
Moore's license. 1 would not willingly answer at the
bar of God for the writings of either ; but of the two, I
W'ould rather bear the sin of Chaucers plain-spoken
words which never suggest more than they say, than
the sin of Moore's language, over which plays a witching
liue and shade of licentiousness. I would rather put the
downright, and often abominable, vulgarity of Swift into
my child's hand, than the scoundrel-indirections of
Sterne. They are both impure writers ; but not equally
harmful. The one says what he means; the other means
what he does not say. Swift is, in this respect, Belial
in his own form ; Sterne is Satan in the form of an avgd
of light : and many w^ill receive the temptation of the
Angel, who would scorn the profler of the Demon.
What an incredible state of morals, in the English

THE STRxVNGE WOMAN. 137

church, that permitted two of her eminent clergy to be
the most licentious writers of the age, and as impure
as almost any of the English literature ! Even our most
classic authors have chosen to elaborate, with exijuisite
art, scenes which cannot but have more eli'ect upon the
passions than upon the taste. Embosomed in the midst
of Thompson's glowing Seasons, one finds descriptions
unsurpassed by any part of Don Juan ; and as much more
dangerous than it is, as a courtezan, countenanced by vir-
tuous society, is more dangerous than when among her
own associates. Indeed, an author who surprises you
with refined indehcacies in moral and reputable writ-
ings, is worse than one, who, without disguise, and on
purpose, serves up a whole banquet of indelicacies.
Many will admit poison-morsels well sugared, who would
revolt from an infernal feast of impurity. There is little
danger that robbers will tempt the honest young to rob-
bery. Someone first tempts him to falsehood ; next, to
petty dishonesties ; next, to pilfering ; then, to thieving;
and now, only, will the robber influence him, when others
have handed him down to his region of crime. Those au-
thors who soften evil, and show deformity with tints of
beauty ; who arm their general purity with the sting of
occasional impurity ; — these are they who take the feet
out of the strait path — the guiltiest part of seduction. He
who feeds an inflamed appetite with food spiced to fire,
is less guilty than he who hid in the mind the leaven
which wrought to this appetite. The polished seducer
is certainly more dangerous than the vulgar debauchee
— both in life, and in literature.

In the same contrast are to be placed Shakespeare
and Buiwer : Shakespeare is sometia^.cs gross, but not
12*

138 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

often covertly impure. BuUver is slily impure, but not
often gross. I am speaking, however, only of Shakes-
peare's Plays, and not of his youthful fugitive pieces ;
which, I am afraid, cannot have part in this exception.
He began wrong, but grew better. At first, he wrote
by the taste of his age ; but when a man, he wrote to his
own taste : and though he is not without sin, yet, com-
pared with his cotemporaries, he is not more illustrious
for his genius than for his purity. Reprehension, to be
effective, should be just. No man is prepared to ex-
cuse properly the occasional blemishes of this wonderful
writer, who has not been shocked at the immeasurable
licentiousness of the Dramatists of his cycle. One
play of Ford, one act, one conversation, has more abom-
inations than the whole world of Shakespeare. Let
those women, who ignorantly sneer at Shakespeare, re-
member that they are indebted to him for the noblest
conceptions of woman's character in our literature — the
more praiseworthy, because he found no models in cur-
rent authors. The occasional touches of truth and
womanly delicacy in the early Dramatists are no com-
pensation for the wholesale coarseness and vulgarity oi
their female characters. In Shakespeare, woman appears
in her true form — pure, disinterested, ardent, devoted ; ca-
pable of the noblest feelings, of4he highest deeds, of any
thing — but meanness and vulgarity. The language of
many of Shakespeare's women would be shocking in our
day ; but so would be the domestic manners of that age.
The same actions may in one age be a sign of corrup-
tion, and be perfectly innocent in another. No one is
shocked that in a pioneer-cabin, one room serves for a
parlor, a kitchen, and a bed-room, for the whole family,

THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 39

and for promiscuous guests. Should fastidiousness re-
volt at this, as vulgar ? — the vulgarity must be accredited
to the fastidiousness, and not to the custom. Yet, it
would be inexcusable in a refined metropolis. But
nothing in these remarks must apologise for language or
deed, which indicates an impure heart. No age, no cus-
tom, may plead extenuation for essential lust ; and no
sound mind can refrain from commendation of the mas-
ter-Dramatist of the world, when he learns that in
writing for a most licentious age, he rose above it so
far as to become something like a model to it of a more
virtuous way.

Bulwer has made the English novel-literature more
vile than he found it. Shakespeare left the dramatical
literature immeasurably purer than it came to him. The
one was a reformer, the other an implacable corrupter.
We respect and admire the one, (while we mark his faults)
because he withstood his age ; and we despise with utter
loathing the other, whose specific gravity of wickedness
sunk him below the level of his own age. With a mode-
rate caution, Shakespeare may be safely put into the
hands of the young. I regard the admission of Bulwer
as a crime against the first principles of virtue.

In all the cases which I have considered, you will
remark a greater indulgence to that impurity which
breaks out on the surface, than to that which lurks in
the blood and destroys the constitution. It is the
curse of our literature that it is traversed by so many
rills of impurity. It is a vast champaign, waving with
unexampled luxuriance of flower, and vine, and fruit ;
but the poisonous flower every where mingles with the
pure ; and the deadly cluster lays its cheek on the whole-

140 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

some graj)e ; nay, in the same cluster grow both the
harmless and the hurtful berry ; so that the hand can
hardly be stretched out to gather llower or Iruit without
coming back poisoned. It is both a shame and an
amazing wonder, that the literature of a Christian na-
tion should reak with a filth which Pagan antiquity could
scarcely endure ; that the IMinisters of Christ should have
left floating in the pool of oHensive writings, much that
would have brought blood to the ciieek of a Roman
priest, and have shamed an actor of tlie school of Aris-
tophanes. Literature is, in turn, both the cause and
eflect of the spirit of the age. Its ellect upon tliis age
has been to create a lively relish for exipjisitely artful
licentiousness, and disgust only for vulgarity. A witty,
brilliant, suggestive indecency is tolerated for the sake of
its genius. An oge which translates and floods the com-
munity with French novels, (inspired by Venus and
Bacchus,) which reprints in popular forms, Byron, and
Bulwer, and Moore, and Fielding, proposes to revise
Shakespeare and expurgate the Bible ! ! Men who, at
home, allow Don Juan to lie within reach of every
reader, will not allow a Minister of the gospel to ex-
pose the evil of such a literature ! To read authors
whose lines drop with the -very gall of de;ith ; to vault in
elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as is possi-
ble without treading over; to express the utmost pos-
sible impurity so dextrously, that not a vulgar word is
used, but rosy, glowing, suggestive language — this, it
seems, is modern refinement. But to expose the prev-
alent vice ; to meet its glittering literature with the
plain and manly language of truth ; to say nothing ex-
cept what one desires to say plainly — this, it seems, is
vulgarity !

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 141

One of the first steps in any reformation must be, not
alone nor first the correction of the grossness, but of
the elegancies of imparity. Could our literature, and
men's conversation, be put under such authority that
neither should express, by insinuation", what dared not
be said openly, in a little time, men would not dare to
say at all what it would be indecent to speak plainly.

If there be here any disciples of Bulwer ready to dis-
port in the very ocean of license, if its waters only seem
translucent ; who can read and relish all that fires the
heart, and are only then distressed and shocked when a
serious man raises the rod to correct and repress the
evil ; if there be here any who can drain his goblet
of mingled wine, and only shudder at chrystal-water ;
any who can see this modern Prophet of villainy
strike the rock of corruption, to water his motley
herd of revellers, but hate him who out of the Rock
of Truth should bid gush the healthful stream ; — I be-
seech them to bow their heads in this Christian assem-
bly, and weep their tears of regret in secret places, until
the evening service be done, and Bulwer can staunch
their tears, and comfort again their wounded hearts.

Whenever an injunction is laid upon plain and unde-
niable scripture-truth, and I am forbidden, upon pain of
your displeasure, to preach it ; then, I should not so much
regard my personal feelings, as the aflront which you
put upon my Master ; and in my inmost soul I shall re-
sent that afiront. There is no esteem, there is no love,
like that which is founded in the sanctity of religion.
Between many of you and me, that sanctity exists. I
stood by your side when you awoke in the dark valley of
conviction, and owned vourselves lost. I have led vou

'V.

142 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

by tlie hand out of the darkness ; by your side I have
prayed, and my tears have mingled with yours. I have
bathed you in the chrystal-waters of a holy baptism ; and
when you sang the song of the ransomed captive, it
filled my heart with a joy as great as that which uttered
it. Love, beginning in such scenes, and drawn from so
sacred a fountain, is not comm.ercial, nor fluctuating.
Amid severe toils and not a few anxieties, it is the
crown of rejoicing to a Pastor. What iiave we in this
world but you ? To be your servant in the gospel, we
renounce all those paths by which other men seek pre-
fei-ment. Silver and gold is not in our houses, and our
names are not heard where fame proclaims others. Rest
we are forbidden until death ; and girded with the whole
armor, our lives are spent in the dust and smoke of con-
tinued battle. But even such love will not tolerate
bondage. We can be servants to love, but never slaves
to caprice ; still less can we heed the mandates of iniq-
uitv !

The proverbs of Solomon are designed to furnish
us a series of maxims for every relation of life. There
will naturally be the most said where there is the most
needed. If the frequency of warning against any sin
measures the liability of man to that sin, then none is
worse than Impurity. In many separate passages is
the solemn warning against the strange woman, given
with a force which must terrify all but the innocent or
incorrigible ; and with a delicacy which all will feel but
those whose modesty is the fluttering of an impure

THE ST RANG K WOMAN. 143

imagination. I shall take such parts of all these passa-
ges as Avill make out a connected narrative.

When icisdom entereth into tliy heart, and knowledge is
pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee . . .
to deliver thee from the strange woman, which flattereth
irith her tongue; Iter lips drop as a honey-comb. Iter mouth
is smoother than oil. She sitteth at the door of her house
on a seat in the high places of the city, to call to passen-
gers icho go right on their ways: ' whoso is simple let him
turn in hither.'' To him that wanteth understanding, she
saith ^stolen ivaters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is
pleasant;'' but he knoweth not that the dead are there.
Lust not after her beauty, neither let her take thee with her
eyelids. She forsaketh the guide of her youth, and for-
getteth the command of her God. Lest thou shouldst pon-
der the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou
canst not know them. Remove thy icay far from Iter, and
come not nigh the door of her house, for her house inclineth
unto death. She has cast down many loounded; yea,
many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is
the icay to Hell, going down to the chamber of death; none
that go unto her, return again; neither take they hold of
the paths of life. Let not thy heart decline to her ways,
lest thou mourn at last, ivhcn thy flesh and thy body are
consumed and say: ^How have I hated instruction, and my
heart deepised reproof. I was in all evil in the midst of
the congregation and assembly.''

I. Can language be found which can draw a corrupt
beauty so vividly as this: Which forsaketh the guide of
her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Look
out upon that fallen creature whose gay sally through

144 THE STRANGE ^V O 51 A N .

the street calls out the significant laugh of bad men, the
pity of good men, and the horror of the pure. Was not
her cradle as pure as ever a loved infant pressed ? Love
soothed its cries. Sisters watched its peaceful sleep,
and a mother pressed it fondly to her bosom ! Had you
afterwards, when spring-flowers covered the earlh, and
every gale was odor, and every sound was music, seen
her, fiiirer than the lily or tiie violet, searching them,
would you not have said, ' sooner shall the rose grow
poisonous than she ; both may wither, but neither cor-,
rupt.' And how often, at evening, did she clasp her tiny
hands in prayer ? How often did she put the wonder-
raising questions to her mother, of God, and heaven, and
the dead — as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision !
As voung womanhood advanced, and these foreshadowed
graces ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, health
flowed in her cheek, love looked from her eye, and pu-
rity was an atmosphere around her. Alas ! she forsook
the guide of her, youth. Faint thoughts of evil, like a far-
off cloud which the sunset gilds, came first ; nor does the
rosy sunset blush deeper along the heaven, than her
cheek, at the first thought of evil. Now, ah ! mother,
and thou guiding elder sister, could ye have seen the
lurking spirit embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer
might have broke the spell, a tear have washed its stain !
Alas ! they saw it not ; she spoke it not ; she was for-
saking the guide of her youth. She thinketh no more of
Heaven. She breatheth no more prayers. She hath
no more penitential tears to shed ; until after a long life,
she drops the bitter tear upon the cheek of despair, —
then her only suitor. Thou hast forsaken the covenant of
thy God. Go down ! fall never to rise ! Hell opens to
be thy home !

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 145

Oh Prince of torment ! if thou hast transforming
power, give some relief to this once innocent child,
whom another has corrupted ! Let thy deepest damna-
tion seize him who brought her hither ! let his corona-
tion be. upon the very mount of torment ! and the rain
of fiery hail be his salutation ! He shall be crowned
with thorns poisoned and anguish-bearing ; and every
woe beat upon him, and every wave of hell roll over the
first risings of baffled hope. If Satan hath one dart
more poisoned than another ; if God hath one bolt more
transfixing and blasting than another ; if there be one
hideous spirit more unrelenting than others ; they shall be
thine, most execrable wretch ! who led her to forsake
the guide of her youth, and to abandon the covenant of her
God. Thy guilty thoughts and guilty deeds shall flit
after thee with bows which never break, and quivers
forever emptying but never exhausted !

II. The next injunction of God to the young is upon
the ensnaring danger of Beauty. Desire .not her beauty
in thy heart, neitJier let her take thee with her eyelids. God
did not make so much of nature, with exquisite beauty,
or put within us a taste for it, without object. He
meant that it should delight us. He made every flower
to charm us ; He never made a color, nor graceful-flying-
bird, nor silvery insect, without meaning to please our
taste. When He clothes a man or woman with beauty.
He confers a favor, did we know how to receive it.
Beauty, with amiable dispositions and ripe intelligence, is
more to any woman than a queen's crown. The pea-
sant's daughter, the rustic belle, if they have woman's
sound discretion, may be rightfully prouder than kings'
daughters ; for God adorns those who are both good and
13

146 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

beautiful ; man can only conceal the want of beauty, by
blazing jewels.

As motbs and tiny insects flutter around the bright
blaze wiiich was kindled for no harm, so the foolish
young fall down burned and destroyed by the IJlaze of
beauty. As the flame which burns to destroy the insect,
is consuming itself and soon sinks into the socket, so
beauty, too often, draws on itself that ruin which it in-
flicts upon others.

If God hath given thee beauty, tremble ; for it is as
gold in thy house — thieves and robbers will prowl
around, and seek to possess it. If God hath put beauty
before thine eyes, remember how many strong men have
been cast down wounded by it. Art thou stronger than
David ? Art thou stronger than mighty patriarchs ? —
than kings and princes, who, by its fascinations, have
lost peace, and purity, and honor, and riches, and ar-
mies, and even kingdoms ? Let other men's destruction
be thy wisdom ; for it is hard to reap prudence upon the
field of experience.

III. In the minute description of this dangerous crea-
ture, mark next how seriously we are cautioned of her
Wiles.

Her idles of dress. Coverings of tapestry and the ^7ie
linen of Egypt are hers ; the perfumes oiinijrih and aloes and
cinnainon. Silks and ribbons, laces and rings, gold and
equipage ; ah ! how mean a price for damnation. The
wretch who would be hung simply for the sake of riding
to the gallows on a golden chariot, clothed in king's rai-
ment— what a fool were he ! Yet how many consent
to enter the chariot of Death, — drawn by the fiery steeds
of lust which fiercely fly, and stop not for food or breath.

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 147

till they have accomplished their fatal journey — if they
may spread their seat with flowery silks, or flaunt their
forms with glowing apparel and precious jewels !

Her wiles of speech. Beasts may not speak ; this
honor is too high for them. To God's imaged-son this
prerogative belongs, to utter thought and feeling in ar-
ticulate sounds. We may breathe our thoughts to a
thousand ears, and infect a multitude with the best por-
tions of our soul. Our feelings are not like a smothered
heat in a choked furnace. How, then, has this soul's
breath, this echo of our thoughts, this only image of our
feelings, been perverted, that from the lips of sin it hath
more persuasion, than from the lips of wisdom ! What
horrid wizzard hath put the world under a spell and
charm, that words from the lips of a strange woman
shall ring upon the ear like tones of music ; while words
from the divine lips of religion fall upon the startled ear
like the funeral tones of the burial-bell ! Philosophy
seems crabbed ; sin, fair. Purity sounds morose and
cross ; but from the lips of the harlot, words drop as
honey, and flow smoother than oil ; her speech is fair,
her laugh is merry as music. The eternal glory of pu-
rity has no lustre, but the deep damnation of lust is made
as bright as the gate of heaven !

Her wiles of love. Love is the mind's light and heat ;
it is that tenuous air in which all the other faculties
exist, as we exist in the atmosphere. A mind of the
greatest stature without love, is like the huge pyramid of
Egypt — chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passa-
ges. A mind with love, is as a king's palace lighted for
a royal festival.

Shame ! tliat the sweetest of all the mind's attributes

148 T 11 K STRANGE 'WOMAN.

should be suborned to sin ! that this daughter of God
should become a Ganymede to arrogant lusts ! — the cup-
bearer to tyrants ! — yet so it is. Devil-tempter ! will thy
poison never cease ? — shall beauty be poisoned ? — shall lan-
guage be charmed ? — shall love be made to defile like pitch,
and burn as the living coals 1 Her tongue is like a bend-
ed bow, which sends the silvery shaft of flattering words.
Her eye shall cheat thee, her dress shall beguile thee,
her beauty is a trap, her sighs are baits, her words are
lures, her love is poisonous, her flattery is the spider's
w^eb spread for thee. Oh ! trust not thy heart nor ear
with Delilah ! The locks of the mightiest Samson are
soon shorn olf, if he will but lay his slumbering head
upon her lap. He who could slay heaps upon heaps of
Philistines, and bear upon his huge shoulders the pon-
derous iron-gate, and pull down the vast temple, was yet
all too weak to contend with one, wicked, artful woman !
Trust the sea with thy tiny boat, trust the fickle wind,
trust the changing skies of iVpril, trust the miser's gene-
rosity, the tyrant's mercy ; but ah ! simple man, trust not
thyself near the artful woman, armed in her beauty, her
cunning raiment, her dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow,
her look of love, her voice of flattery; — for if thou
hadst the strength of ten Ulysses, unless God help thee,
Calypso shall make thee fast, and hold thee in her island !

Next beware the wile of her reasonings. To him
that wanteth understanding she saith, stolen ivafers are
sweet, and bread eaten in seci'et is pleasant. I came forth
to meet thee, and I have found thee.

What says she in the credulous ear of inexperience ?
Why, she tells him that sin is safe ; she swears to him
that sin is pure ; she protests to him that sin is innocent.

THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 49

Out of history she will entice him, and say : Who
hath ever refused my meat-ofterings and drink-offerings ?
What king have I not sought ? What conquerer have I
not conquered ? Philosophers have not, in all their wis-
dom, learned to hate me. I have been the guest of the
world's greatest men. The Egyptian priest, the Athe-
nian sage, the Roman censor, the rude Gaul, have all
worshipped in my temple. Art thou afraid to tread
where Plato trod, and the pious Socrates ? Art thou
wiser than iall that ever lived ?

Nay, she readeth the Bible to him ; she goeth back
along the line of history, and readeth of Abraham, and of his
glorious c6mpeers ; she skippeth past Joseph w-ith averted
looks, and readeth of David and of Solomon ; and what-
ever chapter tells how good men stumbled, there she
has turned down a leaf, and will persuade thee, with
honied speech, that the best deeds of good men were
their sins, and that thou shouldst only imitate them in
their stumbling and falls !

Or, if the Bible will not cheat thee, how will she plead
thine own nature ; how will she whisper, God hath made
thee so. How, like her father, will she lure thee to pluck
the apple, saying. Thou shall not surely die. And she will
hiss at virtuous men, and spit on modest women, and
shake her serpent-tongue at any purity which shall keep
thee from her ways. Oh! then, listen to what God says :
With much fair speech she causeth him to yield ; with the
flattery of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her
as an ox goeth to the slaughter^ or as a fool to the correc-
tion of the stocks^ till a dart strike through his liver ^ — as a
bird hasteth to a snare and knowelh not that it is for his
life.

13*

1 50 THE S T R x\ N G F, WOMAN.

I will ])oint only to another wile. When inexpe-
rience has been beguiled by her infernal machinations,
how, like a flock of startled birds, will spring up late re-
grets, and shame, and fear ; and worst of all, how will
conscience ply her scorpion-whip and lash thee, uttering
with stern visage, 'thou art dishonored, thou art a wretch,
thou art lost!' When the soul is full of such outcry,
memory cannot sleep ; she wakes, and while conscience
still plies the scourge, will bring back to thy thoughts,
youthful purity, home, a mothers face, a sister's love, a
father's counsel. Perhaps it is out of the high heaven
that thy mother looks down to see thy baseness. Oh !
if she has a mother's heart, — nay, but she cannot weep
for thee, there 1

These wholesome pains, not to be felt if there were
not yet health in the mind, would save the victim,
could they have time to work. But how often have
1 seen the spider watch, from his dark round hole,
the struggling fly, until he began to break his web ; and
then dart out to cast his long lithe arms about him, and
fasten new cords stronger than ever. So, God saith, the
strange woman shall secure her ensnared victims if they
struggle: Lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her
ways are moveable that thou canst not know the??i.

She is afraid to see thee soberly thinking of leaving
her, and entering the path of life ; therefore her ways
are moveable. She multiplies devices, she studies a
thousand new wiles, she has some sweet word for every
sense — obsequience for thy pride, praise for thy vanity,
generosity for thy selfishness, religion for thy con-
science, racy quips for thy wearisomeness, spicy scan-
dal for thy curiosity. She is never still, nor the same ;

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 151

but evolving as many shapes as a rolling cloud, and as
many colors as dress the wide prairie.

IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me show you
what God says of the chances of escape to those who
once follow her : Nona that go unto her return again,
neither take they hold of the paths of life. The strength
of this language was not meant absolutely to, exclude
hope from those who, having wasted their substance in
riotous living, would yet return ; but to warn the un-
fallen, into what an almost hopeless gulf they plunge, if
they venture. Some may escape — as here and there a
mangled sailor crawls out of the water upon the beach,
— the only one or two of the whole crew ; the rest are
gurgling in the wave with impotent struggles, or already
sunk to the bottom. There are many evils which hold
their victims by the force of habit; there are others
which fasten them by breaking their return to society.
Many a person never reforms, because reform would
bring no relief. There are other evils which hold men
to them, because they are like the beginning of a fire ;
they tend to burn with fiercer and wider flames, until
all fuel is consumed, and go out only when there is
nothing to burn. Of this last kind is the sin of licen-
tiousness : and when the conflagration once breaks out,
experience has shown, what the Bible long ago declared,
that the chances of reformation are almost none. The
certainty of continuance is so great, that the chances of
escape are dropped from the calculation ; and it is said
roundly, none that go unto her return again.

V. We are repeatedly warned against the strange
woman's house.

There is no vice like licentiousness, to delude with the

152 THE STRANGE AV0 3IAN.

most fascinating proflers of delight, and fulfill the promise
with the most loathsome experience. All vices at the
beginning are silver-tongued, but none so impassioned
as this. All vices in the end cheat their dupes, but none
with such overwhelming disaster as licentiousness. I
shall describe by an allegory, its specious seductions,
its plausible promises, its apparent innocence, its delu-
sive safety, its deceptive joys, — their change, their sting,
their flight, their misery, and the victim's ruin.

Her HOUSE has been cunningly planned by an evil
ARCHITECT to attract and please the attention. It stands
in a vast garden full of enchanting objects. It shines
in glowing colors, and seems full of peace and full of
pleasure. All the signs are of unbounded enjoyment —
safe, if not innocent. Though every beam is rotten,
and the house is the house of death, and in it are all the
vicissitudes of infernal misery ; yet, to the young it ap-
pears a palace of delight. They will not belj^ve that
death can lurk behind so brilliant a fabric. Those who
are within, look out and pine to return ; and those who
are without, look in and pine to enter. Such is the mas-
tery of deluding sin.

That part of the garden which borders on the high-
way of innocence is carefully planted. There is not a
poison-weed, nor thorn, nor thistle there. Ten thou-
sand flowers bloom, and waft a thousand odors. A vic-
tim cautiously inspects it ; but it has been too carefully
patterned upon innocency to be easily detected. This
outer garden is innocent ; — innocence is the lure to wile
you from the patii into her grounds ; — innocence is the
bait of that trap by which she has secured all her vic-
tims. At the gate stands a comely porter, saying

THE STRANGE AVOM AN. 153

blandly : W/ioso is simple ht liim turn in hither. Will
the youth enter ? Will he seek her house ? To himself
he says, 'I will enter only to see the garden, — its fruits,
its flowers, its birds, its arbors, its warbling fountains !'
He is resolved in virtue. He seeks wisdom, not pleas-
ure ! — Dupe! you are deceived already; and this is
your first lesson of wisdom.. He passes, and the porter
leers behind him ! He is within an Enchanter's garden !
Can he not now return, if he wishes ? — he will not wish
to return, until it is too late. He ranges the outer gar-
den near to the highway, thinking as he walks: 'how
foolishly have I been alarmed at pious lies about this
beautiful place ! I heard it was Hell : 1 find it is Para-
dise!'

Emboldened by the innocency of his first steps, he
explores the garden further from the road. The flow-
ers grow richer ; their odors exhilarate ; the very fruit
breathes perfume like flowers; and birds seem intoxi-
cated with delight among the fragrant shrubs and loaded
trees. Soft and silvery music steals along the air. ' Are
angels singing ? — Oh ! fool that I was, to fear this place ;
it is all the heaven I need ! Ridiculous priest, to tell me
that death was here, where all is beauty, fragrance, and
melody ! Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous
apparel as this! Death is grim, and hideous!' He has
come near to the strange woman's House. If it was
beautiful from afar, it is celestial now ; for his eyes are
bewitched with magic. When our passions enchant us,
how beautiful is the way to death ! In every window
are sights of pleasure ; from every opening, issue sounds
of joy — the lute, the harp, bounding feet, and echoing
laugliter. Nymphs have descried this Pilgrim of tempta-

154 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

tion ; — they smile and beckon. Where are his resolutions
now ? This is the virtuous youth who came to observe !
He lias already seen too much ! but he will see more ;
he will taste, feel, regret, weep, wail, die ! The most
beautiful nymph that eye ever rested on, approaches
with decent guise and modest gesture, to give him hos-
pitable welcome. For a moment he recalls his home, his
mother, his sister-circle ; but they seem far-away, dim,
powerless ! Into his ear the beautiful herald pours the
sweetest sounds of love : ' you are welcome here, and
worthy ! You have early wisdom, to break the bonds
of superstition, and to seek these grounds where summer
never ceases, and sorrow never comes ! Hail ! and
welcome to the House of pleasure !' There seemed to
be a response to these words ; the house, the trees, and
the very air, seemed to echo, ' Hail ! and welcome ! '
In the stillness which followed, had the victim been less
intoxicated, he might have heard a clear and solemn
voice which seemed to fall straight down from heaven :
Come not nigh the door of her house. Her house

IS the WAV TO HELL, GOING DOWN TO THE CHAMBERS
OF DEATH !

It is too late ! He has gone in, — who shall never re-
turn. He goeth after her straitway as an ox goelh to the
slaughter; or as a fool to the correction of the stocks . . .
and knoioeth not that it is for his life.

Enter with me, in imagination, the strange woman's
House — where, God grant you may never enter in any
other way. There are five wards — Pleasure, Satiety,
Discovery, Disease, and Death.

Ward of Pleasure.— The eye is dazzled with the mag-
nificence of its apparel, — elastic velvet, glossy silks, bur-

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 155

nished satin, crimson drapery, plushy carpets. Exquisite
pictures glow upon the walls, carved marble adorns every
niche. The inmates are deceived by these lying shows ;
they dance, they sing; with beaming eyes they utter sof-
test strains of flattery and graceful compliment. They
partake the amorous wine, and the repast which loads
the table. They eat, they drink, they are lithe and mer-
ry. Surely, they should be ; for after this brief hour, they
shall never know purity nor joy again ! For this mo-
ment's revelry, they are selling heaven ! The strange
woman walks among her guests in all her charms ; fans
the flame of joy, scatters grateful odors, and urges on
the fatal revehy. As her poisoned wine is quafl'ed, and
the gay creatures begin to reel, the torches wane and
cast but a twilight. One by one, the guests grow som-
nolent ; and, at length, they all repose. Their cup is
exhausted, their pleasure is forever over, life has exhaled
to an essence, and that is consumed ! While they sleep,
servitors, practiced to the work, remove them all to ano-
ther Ward.

Ward of Satiety. — Here reigns a bewildering twi-
light through which can hardly be discerned the wearied
inmates, yet sluggish upon their couches. Oerflushed
with dance, sated with wine and fruit, a fitful drowsi-
ness vexes them. They wake, to crave ; they taste, to
loathe ; they sleep, to dream ; they wake again from
unquiet visions. They long for the sharp taste of plea-
sure, so grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repining,
to sleep ; by starts, they rouse at an ominous dream ;
by starts, they hear strange cries ! The fruit burns and
torments ; the wine shoots sharp pains through their
pulse. Strange wonder fills them. They remember the

156 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

recent joy, as a reveller in the morning thinks of his
midnight-madness. The glowing garden and the ban-
quet now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate
return; pensively they long for their native spot! At
sleepless moments, mighty resolutions form, — substantial
as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope will not
shine. The past is not pleasant; the present is weari-
some ; and the future gloomy.

The ward of Discovery. — In the third ward no decep-
tion remains. The floors are bare ; the naked walls drip
filth ; the air is poisonous with sickly fumes, and echos
with mirth concealing hideous misery. None supposes
that he has been happy.. The past seems like the
dream of a miser, who gathers gold spilled like rain
upon the road, and wakes, clutching his bed, and crying
'where is it?' On your right hand, as you enter, close
by the door, is a group of fierce felons in deep drink
with drugged liquor. With red and swoln faces, or
white and thin ; or scarred with ghastly corruption ;
with scowling brows, baleful eyes, bloated lips and de-
moniac grins ; — in person all uncleanly, in morals all
debauched, in peace, bankrupt — the desperate wretches
wrangle with each other, swearing bitter oaths, and
heaping reproaches each upon each ! Around the room
you see miserable creatures unappareled, or dressed in
rags, sobbing and moaning. That one who gazes out
at the window, calling for her mother and weeping, was
right tenderly and purely bred. She has been baptised
twice, — once to God, and once to the Devil. She sought
this place in the very vestments of God's house. 'Call
not on thy mother! she is a saint in Heaven, and
cannot hear thee!' Yet, all night long she dreams of

THE STRANG K AV O M A N . 157

home, and ciiildhoocl, nnd wakes to sigh and weep ; and
between her sobs, she cries 'mother! mother!'

Yonder is a youth, once a servant at God's altar.
His hair hangs tangled and torn ; his eyes are blood-
shot ; his face is livid ; his fist is clenched. All the day,
he wanders up and down, cursing sometimes himself, and
sometimes the wretch that brought him hither ; and
when he sleeps, he dreams of Hell ; and then he wakes
to feel all he dreamed. Tiiis is the Ward of reality.
All know why the first rooms looked so gay — they were
enchanted ! It was enchanted wine they drank ; and
enchanted fruit they ate : now they know the pain of
fatal food in every limb !

Ward of Disease. — Ye that look wistfully at the
pleasant front of this terrific house, come with me now,
and look long into the terror of this Ward ; for here are
the seeds of sin in their full harvest form ! We are in
a lazar-room ; its air oppresses every sense ; its sights
confound our thoughts ; its sounds pierce our ear ; its
stench I'epels us : it is full of diseases. Here a shud-
dering wretch is clawing at his breast, to tear away that
worm which gnaws his heart. By him is another,
whose limbs are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next,
swelters another in reeking filth ; his eyes rolling in
bony sockets, every breath a pang, and every pang a
groan. But yonder, on a pile of rags, lies one whose
yells of frantic agony appal every ear. Clutching his
rags with spasmodic grasp, his swoln tongue lolling from
a blackened mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and roll-
ing, he shrieks oaths ; now blaspheming God, and now
imploring him. He hoots and shouts, and shakes his
grisly head from side to side, cursing or praying ; now
14

158 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

calling death, and then, as if driving away fiends, yelling
avaunt ! avaunt !

Another has been ridden by pain, until he can no lon-
ger shriek ; but lies foaming and grinding his teeth, and
clenching his bony hands, until the nails pierce the palm —
though there is no blood there to issue out — trembling
all the time with the shudders and chills of utter agony.
The happiest wretch in all this Ward, is an Idiot; —
dropsical, distorted, and moping ; all day he wags his
head, and chatters, and laughs, and bites his nails ; then
he will sit for hours motionless, with open jaw, and
glassy eye fixed on vacancy. In this ward are huddled
all the diseases of pleasure. This is the torture-room
of the strange woman's House, and it excels the Inqui-
sition. The wheel, the rack, the bed of knives, the
roasting fire, the brazen room slowly heated, the slivers
driven under the nails, the hot pincers, — what are these
to the agonies of the last days of licentious vice ? Hun-
dreds of rotting wretches would change their couch of
torment in the strange woman's House, for the gloomi-
est terror of the Inquisition, and profit by the change.
Nature herself becomes the tormentor. Nature, long
trespassed on and abused, at length casts down the
wretch ; searches every vein, makes a road of every
nerve for the scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls
at every muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the
brain, eats out the skin, and casts living coals of torment
on the heart. What are hot pincers to the envenomed
claws of disease? What is it to be put into a pit of
snakes and slimy toads, and feel their cold coil or pierc-
ing fang, to the creeping of a whole body of vipers ? —
where every nerve is a viper, and every vein a viper,

THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 59

and every muscle a serpent ; and the whole body, in all
its parts, coils and twists upon itself in unimaginable
anguish ? I tell you, there is no Inquisition so bad
a^ that which the Doctor looks upon ! Young man ! 1
can shew you in this Ward worse pangs than ever a
savage produced at the stake ! — than ever a tyrant
wrung out by engines of torment! — than ever an In-
quisitor devised ! Every year, in every town, die
wretches scalded and scorched with agony. Were the
sum of all the pain that comes with the last stages of
vice collected, it would rend the very heavens with its
outcry ; would shake the earth ; would blanch the very
cheek of Hell ! Ye that are listening in the garden of
this strange woman, among her cheating flow^ers ; ye
that are dancing in her halls in the first Ward, come
hither ; look upon her fourth Ward— its vomited blood,
its sores and fiery blotches, its prurient sweat, its dis-
solving ichor, and rotten bones ! Stop, young man !
You turn your head from this ghastly room ; and yet,
stop ! — and stop soon, or thou shalt lie here ! Mark the
solemn signals of thy passage ! Thou hast had already
enough of warnings in thy cheek, in thy bosom, in thy
pangs of premonition !

But ah ! every one of you who are dancing with the
covered paces of death, in the strange woman's first hall,
let me break your spell ; for now I shall open the doors
of the last Ward. Look ! — Listen '.—Witness your own
end, unless you take quickly a warning !

Ward of Death. — No longer does the incarnate wretch
pretend to conceal her cruelty. She shoves — aye ! as if
they were dirt — she shovels out the wretches. Some fall
headlong through the rotten floor,— a long fall to a fiery

160 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

bottom. The floor trembles to deep thunders which roll
below. Here and there, jets of flame spout up, and give
a lurid light to the murky hall. Some would fain es-
cape ; and flying across the treacherous floor, which
man never safely passed, they go through pitfalls and
treacherous traps, with hideous outcries and astounding
yells ! Fiends laugh ! The infernal laugh, the ciy of
agony, the thunder of damnation, shake the very roof
and echo from wall to wall.

Oh ! that the young might see the end of vice be-
fore they see the beginning ! 1 know that you shrink
from this picture ; but your safety requires that you
should look long into the Ward of Death, that fear may
supply strength to your virtue. See the blood oozing
from the wall, the fiery hands which pluck the wretches
down, the light of hell gleaming through, and hear its
roar as of a distant ocean chafed w^ith storms. Will
you sprinkle the wall with your blood ? — will you feed
those flames with your flesh ? — will you add your voice
to those thundering wails 1 — will you go down a prey
through the fiery floor of the chamber of death? Be-
lieve then the word of God : Her house is the way to
Hell, going down to the chambers of death, . . . avoid it,
pass not by it, turn fro7Ji it, and pass away !

I have described the strange woman's House in strong
language, and it needed it. If your taste shrinks from
the description, so does mine. Hell, and all the ways to
Hell, when we pierce the cheating disguises and see
the truth, are terrible and trying to behold ; and if men
would not walk there, neither would we pursue their
steps,' to sound the alarm, and gather back whom we
can.

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 161

Allow me to close by directing your attention to a
few points of especial danger.

I. I solemnly warn you against indulging a morbid im-
agination. In that busy and mischievous faculty begins
the evil. Were it not for his airy imaginations, man
might stand his own master — not overmatched by the
worst part of himself. But ah ! these summer-reveries,
these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles builded for
no good purposes, — they are haunted by impure spirits
who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed
are the pure in heart. Blessed art thou, jnost favored of
God, whose thoughts are chastened; whose imagination
will not breathe or fly in tainted air ; and whose path
has been measured by the golden reed of Purity.

May I not paint Purity, as a saintly virgin, in spot-
less white, walking with open face, in an air so clear
that no vapor can stain it.

"Upon her lightning-brow love proudly sitting.
Flames out in power, shines out in majesty."

Her steps are a queen's steps ; God is her father and
thou her brother, if thou wilt make her thine ! Let thy
heart be her dwelling; wear upon thy hand her ring,
and on thy breast her talisman.

II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the young of
evil companions. Decaying fruit corrupts the neighbor-
ing fruit. You cannot touch pitch and be undefiled.
You cannot make your head a metropolis of base stories,
the ear and tongue a highway of immodest words, and
yet be pure. Another, as well as yourself, may throw
a spark on the magazine of your passions — beware how
your companions do it ! No man is your friend who
14*

162 THE STRANGE AV O 31 A N .

will corrupt you. An impure man is every good man's
enemy — your deadly foe ; and all the worse, if he hide
his poisoned dagger under the cloak of good fellowship.
Therefore, select your associates, assort them, winnow
them, keep the grain, and let the wind sweep the chaff.

III. But I warn you, with yet more solemn emphasis,
against evil books and evil pictures. There is in every
town an undercurrent which glides beneath our feet un-
suspected by the pure ; out of which, notwithstanding,
our sons scoop many a goblet. Books are hidden in
trunks, concealed in dark holes ; pictures are stored in
sly portfolios, or trafficked from hand to hand ; and the
handiwork of depraved art is seen in other f(jrms which
ought to make a harlot blush.

I should think a man would loathe himself, and wake
up from owning such things as from a horrible nightmare.
Those who circulate them are incendiaries of morality ;
those who make them, equal the worst public criminals. A
pure heart would shrink from these abominable things as
from death. France, where religion long ago went out
smothered in licentiousness, has flooded the world with
a species of literature redolent of depravity. Upon the
plea of exhibiting nature and man, novels are now
scooped out of the very lava of corrupt passions. They
are true to nature, but to nature as it exists in knaves
and courtezans; — true, where luxury and license have
called to their aid, art, taste, literature, and ingenuity, to
pervert the delicacy of pure feeling, and stram it to
the extravagancies of corrupt sentimentalism. Under a
plea of humanity, we have shown up to us troops of har-
lots, to prove that they are not so bad as purists think :
gangs of desperadoes, to show that there is nothing in

THE STRANGE WOMAN. 163

crime inconsistent witli the noblest feelings. We have
in French and English novels of the infernal school,
humane murderers, lascivious saints, holy infidels, hon-
est robbers. These artists never seem lost, except
when straining after a conception of religion. Their
devotion is such as might be expected from thieves,
in the purlieus of thrice-deformed vice. Their Deity is
to God, about what Jupiter or Juggernaut is to Jehovah.
Exhausted libertines are our professors of morality.
They scrape the very sediment and muclc of society to
mould their creatures ; and their volumes are monster-
galleries, in which the inhabitants of old Sodom would have
felt at home as connoisseurs and critics. Over loath-
some women, and unutterably vile men, huddled together
in motley groups, and over all their monstrous deeds, their
lies, their plots, their crimes, their dreadful pleasures,
their glorying conversation, is thrown the checkered
light of a hot imagination, until they glow with an
infernal lustre. Novels of the French school, and of
English imitators, are the common-sewers of society,
into which drain the concentrated filth of the worst pas-
sions of the worst creatures of the worst cities. Such
novels come to us impudently pretending to be refor-
mers of morals and liberalizers of religion ; they pro-
pose to instruct our laws, and teach a discreet humanity
to justice ! The Ten Plagues have visited our literature ;
wjiter is turned to blood; frogs and lice creep and hop
over our most familiar things, — the couch, the cradle, and
the bread-trough ; locusts, murrain, and fire, are smiting
every green thing. We are disgracing our tongue, by
translating into it the novel-literature of France. I am
ashamed and outraged when 1 think that wretches could

.-:i

164 THE STRANGE WOMAN.

be found to open these foreign seals, and let out their
plagues upon us — that any Satanic Pilgrim should voyage
to France to dip from the dead sea of her abomina-
tion, a baptism for our sons. It were a mercy to this,
to import serpents from Africa and pour them out on
our prairies ; lions from Asia, and free them in our for-
ests ; lizards and scorpions and black tarantulas, from
the Indies, and put them in our gardens. Men could
slay these, but those oflspring-reptiles of the French
mind, who can kill these? You might as well draw
sword on a plague, or charge a malaria with the bayo-
net. This black-lettered literature circulates in this
town, fioats in our stores, nestles in the shops, is finger-
ed and read nightly, and hatches in the young miud
broods of salacious thoughts. While the parent strives
to infuse Christian purity into his child's heart, he is an-
ticipated by most accursed messengers of evil ; and the
heart hisses already like a nest of young and nimble
vipers.

IV. Once more, let me persuade you that no exam-
ples in high places, can justify imitation in low places.
Your purity is too precious to be bartered, because an
official knave tempts by his example. I would that
every eminent place of state were a sphere of light,
from which should be flung down on your path a cheer-
ing glow to guide you on to virtue. But if these wan-
dering stars, reserved I do believe for final blackness of
darkness, wheel their malign spheres in the orbits of
corruption, — go not after thenl. God is greater than
wicked great men ; Heaven is higher than the highest
places of nations ; and if God and Heaven are not
brighter to your eyes than great men in high places,

TflE STRANGE WOMAN. 165

then you must take part in tlieir doom, when, ere long,
God shall dash them to pieces !

V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard your heart-
purity. Never lose it ; if it be gone, you have lost
from the casket the most precious gift of God. The
first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if
soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap ; if lost, can-
not be found, though sought carefully with tears. If a
harp be broken, art may repair it ; if a light be quenched,
the flame may enkindle it ; but if a flower be crushed,
what art can repair it ? — if an odor be wafted away,
who can collect or bring it back ?

The heart of youth is a wide prairie. Over it hang
the clouds of heaven to water it, the sun throws its
broad sheets of light upon it, to wake its life ; out of
its bosom spring, the long season through, flowers of a
hundred names and hues, twining together their lovely
forms, wafting to each other a grateful odor, and nod-
ding each to each in the summer-breeze. Oh ! such
would man be, did he hold that purity of heart which
God gave him ! But you have a depraved heart. It is
a vast continent; on it are mountain-ranges of powers,
and dark deep streams, and pools, and morasses. If
once the full and terrible clouds of temptation do settle
thick and fixedly upon you, and begin to cast down their
dreadful stores, may God save whom man can never!
Then the heart shall feel tides and slrean)S of irresisti-
ble power, mocking its control, and hurrying liercely
down from steep to steep, with growing desolation.
Your only resource is to avoid the uprising of your giant-
passions.

-^^

166 THE STRANGE AV O M A N .

We are drawing near to a festival day,* by the usage
of ages, consecrated to celebrate the birth of Christ. At
his advent, God hung out a prophetic star in the heaven ;
guided by it, the wise men journeyed from the east and
worshipped at his feet. Oh ! let the star of Purity hang
out to thine eye, brighter than the orient orb to the
Magi ; let it lead thee, not to the Babe, but to His feet
who now stands in Heaven, a Prince and Savior ! If
thou hast sinned, one look, one touch, shall cleanse thee
whilst thou art worshipping, and thou shalt rise up
healed.

Note.— Tlie exceptions taken to the cnrrent reformation-novels of Godwin,
Bulwer, Dickens, (perhaps.) Eugene Sue, and a host of others, requires a
word of explanation. 1. We do not object to any reasonable effort at reform-
ation, moral, social, civil, or economical — much is needed. So far, the design
of this school of Romancers is praiseworthy. 2. But we doubt the propriety
of employing fictions as an instrument; especially fictions wrought to produce
a stage-eflect, a violent thrill, rather than a conviction. These works affect
the ^feelings more than the opinions. 3. Nine tenths of novel -readers are the
young, the unreflecting, or those whose hearts have been macadamised by the
incessant tramping often times ten thousand heroes and heroines, marching
across their feelings. Efforts at reformation should be directed to other read-
ers than these. 4. But the worst is yet to be told. Under the pretence of
social reformations, the most flagitious vices are inculcated. There can be no
doubt of it. An analysis of the best characters would give pride, lawlessness,
passion, revenge, lusts, hypocricies; in short, a catalogue of vices. Eugene
Sue seeks to raise the operatives, to shew the ruinous partiality of law, the
hideous evils of prisons, &c. &c. The design appears well. What part of
this design are the constant arid deliberate lies of Rodolphe, the hero ? This
wandering prince coolly justifies himself in putting out a man's eyes, because
the law would slay him if delivered up I — provides means for decoying con-
victs from prisons! — sets on foot atrocious deceptions, to crush deceptions! —
This is the best character. Unquestionably the purest woman is Goualeuse.
redeemed from prostitution ! Madame Lucenay lives in unblushing adultery
with Saint Remy, who proves to be a forger! " We are edified by a scene of
noble indignation and virtue, in which this woman, who has violated the most
sacred instincts, and all the sanctities of the family, teaches Remy his degra-
dation for violating civil laws ! Admirable reform ! An unblushing adulte-
ress preaches so well to her paramour forger ! The diabolical voluptuousness
of Cecily— the assignations of the pure Madame D"Harville — the astonishing
reformations produced in a single hour, in which harlots turn vestals, mur-
derers philanthropists, poachers and marauders more honest than honest men
— these are but specimens of the instnmients by which this new and popular
reform is changing our morals, and Christianizing us ! What then shall be
said of the works of George Sands, Masson, Dumas, M. de Balsac and
others like them, by whose side Eugene Sue is an angel of Purity ?

* This Lecture was delivered upon Christmas-eve.

LECTURE VII.

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in
the days of thy youth, and walk, in the ways of thine heart, and in
the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God
will bring thee into judgment. Eccl. xi. 9.

I AM to venture the delicate task of reprehension, al-
ways unwelcome, but pecuHarly offensive upon topics
of public popular amusement. I am anxious, in the be-
ginning, to put myself right with the young. If I satisfy
myself, christian men, and the sober community, and do
not satisfy them^ my success will be like a physician's,
whose prescriptions please himself, and the relations,
and do good to every body except the patient^ — he dies.

Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that I am not med-
dling with matters which do not concern me. This is
the impression which the patrons and partners of crimi-
nal amusements study to make. upon your minds. They
represent our duty to be in the church., — taking care
of doctrines, and of our own members. When more
than this is attempted, when we speak a word for
you who are not church-members, we are met with the
surly answer, ' Why do you meddle with things which
don't concern you 1 If you do not enjoy these pleasures,

168 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

why do you molest those who do ? May not men do
as they please in a free country, without being hung up
in a gibbet of public remark V It is conveniently for-
gotten, I suppose, that in a free country we have the
same right to criticise pleasure, which others have to
enjoy it. — Indeed, you and I both know, young gentle-
men, that in cofiee-house circles, and in convivial feasts
nocturnal, the Church is regarded as little better than a
spectacled old beldam, whose impertinent eyes are spy-
ing every body's business but her own ; and who, too
old or too homely to be tempted herself, with compul-
sory virtue pouts at the joyous dalliances of the young
and gay. Religion is called a nun, sable with gloomy
vestments ; and the Church a cloister, where ignorance
is deemed innocence, and which sends out querulous rep-
rehensions of a world, which it knows nothing about, and
has professedly abandoned. This is pretty ; and is only
defective, in not being true. The Church is not a clois-
ter, nor her members recluses, nor are our censures of
vice intermeddling. Not to dwell in generalities, let us
take a plain and common case :

A strolling company offer to educate our youth ; and
to show the community the road of morality, which,
probably they have not seen themselves for twenty
years. We cannot help laughing at a generosity so
much above one's means : and when they proceed to
hew and hack each other with rusty iron, to teach our
boys valor; and dress up practical mountebanks, to teach
theoretical virtue ; if we laugh somewhat more, they
turn upon us testily : Do you mind your own business,
and leave us loith ours. We do not interfere with your
preaching, do you let alone our acting.

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 169

But softly — may not religious people amuse them-
selves with very diverting men ? I hope it is not bigo-
try to have eyes and ears : I hope it is not fanaticism,
in the use of these excellent senses, for us to judge that
throwing one's heels higher than their head a-dancing,
is not exactly the way to teach virtue to our daughters ;
and that women, whose genial warmth of temperament
has led them into a generosity something too great,
are not the persons to teach virtue, at any rate. Oh no ;
we are told, Christians must not know that all this is very
singular. Christians ought to think that men who are
kings and dukes and philosophers on the stage, are
virtuous men, even if they gamble all night, and are
drunk all day ; and if men are so used to comedy, that
their life becomes a perpetual farce on morality, we
have no right to laugh at this extra-professional acting !

Are we meddlers, who only seek the good of our own
families, and of our own community where we live and
expect to die ? or they, who wander up and down with-
out ties of social connection, and without aim, except
of money to be gathered off from men's vices ?

1 am anxious to put all religious men in their right
position before you ; and in this controversy between
them and the gay world, to show you the facts upon bofh
sides. A floating population, in pairs or companies,
without leave asked, blow the trumpet for all our youth
to flock to their banners ! Are they related to them ? —
are they concerned in the welfare of our town ? — do
they live among us ? — do they bear any part of our bur-
dens ? — do they care for our substantial citizens ? We
grade our streets, build our schools, support all our
municipal laws, and the young men are ours ; our
15

170 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

sons, our brothers, our wai'ds, clerks, or apprentices ;
they are living in our houses, or stores, or shops, and we
are their guardians, and take care of them in health, and
watch them in sickness ; yet every vagabond who floats
in hither, swears and swaggers, as if they were all his :
and when they ofler to corrupt all these youth, we pay-
ing them round sums of money for it, and we get courage
finally to say that we had rather not; that industry and
honesty are better than expert knavery — they turn upon
us in great indignation with, W/ii/ dun't you mind your
own business— XL-hat are you meddling iciih our a fairs
for ?

I will suppose a case. With much pains-taking, I
have saved enough money to buy a little garden-spot.
I put all around it a good fence — I cart in upon it a gen-
erous allowance of manure — I put the spade into it and
mellow the soil full deep : I go to the nursery and pick
out choice fruit trees — I send abroad and select the
best seeds of the rarest vegetables ; and so my garden
thrives. I know every inch of it, for I have watered
every inch with sweat. One morning I am awakened
by a mixed sound of sawing, digging, and delving ;
end looking out, I see a dozen men at work in my gar-
den. I run down and find one man sawing out a
huge hole in the fence ; "My dear sir, what are you
doing?"' "Oh, this high fence is very troublesome to
climb over; I am fixing an easier way for folks to get
in."' Another man has headed down several choice
trees, and is putting in new grafts. "Sir, what are you
changing the kind for?" "Oh, this kind don't suit me;
I like a new kind." One man is digging up my beans,
to plant cockles ; another is rooting up my strawber-

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 171

ries, to put in pursley ; and another is dfotroying my
currants, and gooseberries, and raspberries, to plant
mustard and Jamestown weed. At last, I lose all pa-
tience, and cry out, 'Well gentlemen, this will never do.
I will never tolerate this abominable imposition ; you
are ruining my garden.' One of them says, " You old
hypocritical bigot ! do you mind your business, and let
us enjoy ourselves. Take care of your house, and do
not pry into our pleasures."

Fellow citizens ! I own that no man could so invade
your garden; but men are allowed thus to invade our
town, and destroy our children. You will let them
evade your laws, to fleece and demoralize you ; and
you sit down under their railing, as though you were the
intruders ! — ^just as if the man, who drives a thief out
of his house, ought to ask the rascal's pardon for in-
terfering with his little plans of pleasure and profit !

Every parent has a right — every citizen and every
minister has the same right to expose traps, which men
have to set them ; the same right to prevent mischief
which men have to plot it ; the same right to attack
vice which vice has to attack virtue ; a better right
to save our sons and brothers and companions, than
artful men have to destroy them.

The necessity of amusement is admitted on all hands.
There is an appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every
sense, for which God has provided the material. Gaiety
of every degree, this side of puerile levity, is wholesome
to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature is
a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magni-
tude of God's works is not less admirable than its
exhilarating beautv. The rudest forms have somethinsr

172 POPUX-AR AMUSEMENTS.

of beauty ; the ruggedest strength is graced with some
charm ; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature,
are attractive by qualities of beauty more than is neces-
sary for mere utility. The sun could go down without
gorgeous clouds ; evening could advance v/ithout its
evanescent brilliance ; trees might have flourished with-
out symmetry ; flowers have existed without odor, and
fruit without flavor. When I have journeyed through
forests, where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist
without apparent use ; through prairies, wliose undula-
tions exhibit sheets of flowers innumerable and abso-
lutely dazzling the eye with their prodigality of beauty —
beauty, not a tithe of which is ever seen by man — I
have said, it is plain that God made a great many things
simply to please Himself. The earth is his garden, as
an acre is man's. God has made us like Himself, to be
pleased by the universal "beauty of the world. He has
made provision in nature, in society, and in the family,
for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart
with the perpetual sunshine of delight.

Upon this broad earth, purfled with flowers, scented
with odors, brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and
re-echoing melody, I take my stand against all demor-
alizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our Father's
house is so full of dear delights, that we must wander
prodigal to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough
for drink? — when the trees of God's heritage bend over
our head, and solicit our hand to pluck the golden fruit-
age, must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom —
outside fair, and inside ashes ?

Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear clowns, and
see rare feats of horsemanship ; but a bird may poise

POPULAR AMUSKMENTS. 173

Lenealli the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from
the high iieaven ; then flit with graceful ease hither and
thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial
fountain of sound^no man cares for that.

Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies ^are per-
forming in every act ; nations pitching headlong to their
final catastrophe ; others, raising their youthful forms to
begin the drama of their existence. The world of so-
ciety is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of
beauty. The great dramatic throng of life is hustling
.along — the wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the
bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles before us
smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as
the spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sun-
shine. To this vast Theatre which God hath builded,
where stranger plays are seen than ever author writ,
man seldom cares to come. When God dramatises,
when nations act, or all the human kind conspire to
educe the vast catastrophe, men sleep and snore, and
let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought upon ; and
turn from all its varied magnificence to hunt out some
candle-lighted hole and gaze at drunken ranters, or cry
at the piteous virtue of harlots in distress. It is my ob-
ject then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure, bul
from unworthy pleasures ; not to lessen their enjoy-
ments, but to increase them, by rejecting the counter-
feit and the vile.

Of gambling, I have already sufficiently spoken. Of
cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and pugilistic contests, 1
need to speak but little. These are the desperate
excitements of debauched men; but no man becomes
desperately criminal, until he has been genteelly crimi-
15*

174 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

nal. No one spreads his sail upon such waters, at
first ; tliese brutal amusements are but the gulf into
which flow all the streams of criminal pleasures ; and
they who embark upon the river, are sailing toward
the gulfe Wretches who have waded all the depths
of iniquity, and burned every passion to the socket,
fmd in rage and blows and blood,. the -only stimulus of
which they are susceptible. You are training your-
selves to be just such wretches, if you are exhausting
your passions in illicit indulgences.

As it is impossible to analyze, separately, each vicious
amusement proffered to the young, I am compelled to
select two, each the representative of a clan. Thus, the
reasonings applied""to the amusement of Racing, apply
equally well to all violent amusements which con-
gregate indolent and dissipated men, by ministering in-
tense excitement. The reasonings applied to the Thea-
tre, with some modifications, apply to the Circus, to
promiscuous balls, to night-revelling, bachanalian feasts,
and to other similar indulgences.

Many, who are not in danger, may incline to turn
IVom these pages ; they live in rural districts, in vil-
lages, or towns, and are out of the reach of jockeys, and
actors, and gamblers. This is the very reason why you
should read. We are such a migratory, restless people,
that our home is usually every where but at home; and
almost every young man makes annual, or biennial visits
to famous cities ; conveying produce to market, or pur-
chasing wares and goods. It is at such times that the
young are in extreme danger ; for they are particularly
anxious, at such times, to appear at their full age. A
young man is ashamed, in a great hotel, to seem raw and

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 175

not to know the mysteries of the bar and of the town.
They put on a very remarkable air, which is meant for
easiness ; they affect profusion of expense ; they think it
meet for a gentleman to know nil that certain other city-
, gentlemen seem proud of knowing. As sober citizens
are not found lounging at Hotels ; and the gentlemanly
part of the travelling community, are usually retiring,
modest, and unnoticeable, — the young are left to come
in contact chiefly with a very flash class of men who
swarm about city-Restaurateurs and Hotels, — swoln
clerks, crack sportsmen, epicures, and rich green youth,
seasoning. These are the most numerous class which
engage the attention of the young. They bustle in
the sitting room, or crowd the bar, assume the chief
seats at the table, and play the petty lord in a manner
so brilliant, a,s altogether to dazzle our poor country boy,
who mourns at his deficient education, at the poverty
of his rural oaths, and the meagerness of those illicit
pleasures, which he formerly nibbled at with mouselike
stealth; and he sighs for these riper accomplishments.
Besides, it is well known, that large commercial es-
tablishments have, residing at such hotels, well appoint-
ed clerks to draw customers to their counter. It is their
business to make your acquaintance, to fish out the
probable condition of your funds, to sweeten your tem-
per with delicate tit-bits of pleasure ; to take you to the
Theatre, and a little further on, if need be ; to draw you
in to a generous supper, and initiate you to the high life
of men whose whole life is only the varied phases of
lust, gastronomical or amorous.

Besides these, there lurk in such places lynx-eyed pro-
curers ; men who have an interest in your appetites ;

176 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

who look upon a young man, with some money, just as
a butcher looks upon a bullock — a thing of so many
pounds aviordupoise, of so much beef, so much tallow,
and a hide. If you have nothing, they will have nothing
to do with you ; if you have means, they undertake to
supply you with the disposition to use them. They
know the city, they know its haunts, they know its
secret doors, its blind passages, its spicy pleasures, its
racy vices, clear down to the mud-slime of the very
bottom.

Meanwhile, the accustomed restraint of home cast off,
the youth feels that he is unknown, and may do what he
chooses, unexposed. There is, moreover, an intense cu-
riosity to see many things of which he has long ago heard
and wondered; and it is the very art and education of
vice, to make itself attractive. It comes with garlands
of roses about its brow, with nectar in its goblet, and
love upon its tongue.

If you have, beforehand, no settled opinions as to
what is right and what is wrong ; if your judgment is
now, for the first time, to be formed upon the propriety
of your actions ; if you are not controlled by settled
principles, there is scarcely a chance for your purity.

For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss these things,
that you may settle your opinions and principles before
temptation assails you. As a ship is built upon the dry
shore, which afterwards is to dare the storm and brave
the sea, so w^ould I build you staunch and strong, ere
you be launched abroad upon life.

I. Racing. This amusement justifies its existence
by the plea of utility. We will examine it upon its
own ground. Who are the patrons of the Turf? — far-

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 177

mers ? — laborers 1 — men who are practically the most
interested in the improvement of stock? The unerring
instinct of self-interest would lead these men to patro-
nize the Course, if its utility were real. It is notorious
that these are not the patrons of racing. It is sustained
by two classes of men — gambling jockeys and jaded rich
men. In England and in our own country, where the
turf-sports are freshest, they owe their existence entirely
to the extraordinary excitement which they afford to
dissipation, or to cloyed appetites. For those industrial
purposes for which the horse is chiefly valuable, for road-
sters, hacks, and cart-horses, what do the patrons of the
turf care ? Their whole anxiety is centered upon win-
ning cups and stakes ; and that is incomparably the best
blood which will run the longest space in the shortest
time. The points required for this are not, ai*d never
will be, the points for substantial service. And it is noto-
rious, that racing in England deteriorated the stock in
such important respects, that the light-cavalry and dra-
goon-service suffered severely, until dependence upon
turf stables was abandoned. New England, where rac-
ing is unknown, is to this day the place where the horse
exists in the finest qualities; and for all economical
purposes, Virginia and Kentucky must yield to New
England. Except for the sole purpose of racing, an
eastern horse brings a higher price than any other.

The other class of patrons who sustain a Course are
mere gambling jockeys. As crows to a corn-field, or
vultures to their prey ; as flies to summer-sweet, so to
the annual races, flow the whole tribe of gamesters
and pleasure-lovers. It is the Jerusalem of wicked men ;
and thither the tribes go up, like Israel of old, but for a

178 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

far different sacrifice. No form of social abomination
is unknown or unpracticed ; and if all the good that is
claimed, and a hundred limes more, were done to horses,
it would be a dear bargain. To ruin men for the sake
of improving horses ; to sacrifice conscience and purity
for the sake of good bones and muscles in a beast ; this
is paying a little too much for good brutes. Indeed,
the shameless immorality, the perpetual and growing
dishonesty, the almost immeasurable secret villainy
of gentlemen of the turf, has alarmed and disgusted
many stalwart racers, who, having no objection to
some evil, are appalled at the very ocean of depravity
which rolls before them. I extract the words of one
of the very leading sportsmen of England. '-'How many
fine domains have been shared among these hosts of
rapacious sharks, during the last two hundred years,-
and, unless the system be altered, how many more are
doomed to fall into the same gulf ! For, we lament
to say, the evil has increased: all heretofore has been
'tarts and cheese-cakes' to the villainous proceedings of
the last twenty years on the English tuif''

1 will drop this barbarous amusement, with a few ques-
tions.

What have you, young men, to do with the turf, ad-
mitting it to be what it claims, a school for horses? Are
you particularly interested in that branch of learning?

Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such tremendous
excitement as that of racing ?

Is the invariable company of such places of a kind
which you ought to be found in ? — will races make you
more moral ? — more industrious ? — more careful ? — eco-
nomical ? — trustworthy ?

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. ITD

You \vho have attended them, what advice would
you give a young man, a younger brother for instance,
who should seriously ask if he had better attend ?

I digress, to say one word to women. When a Course
was opened at Cincinnati, ladies would not attend it :
when one was opened here, ladies would not attend it :
For very good reasons — tliey were ladies. If it be said
that they attend the Races at the South and in England,
I reply, that they do a great many other things which
you would not choose to do.

Roman ladies could see hundreds of gladiators stab
and hack each other — could you 1 Spanish ladies can
see savage bull-fights — would you ? It is possible for a
modest woman to countenance very questionable prac-
tices, where . the customs of society and the universal
public opinion approve them. But no woman can set
herself against public opinion, in favor of an immoral
sport, without being herself immoral ; for, if worse be
wanting, it is immorality enough for a woman to put
herself where her reputation will lose its suspiciousless
lustre.

II. The Theatre. Desperate eflbrts are made, year
by year, to resuscitate this expiring evil. Its claims are
put forth with vehemence. Let us examine them.

The Drama cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be to
facts. Let the roll of English literature be explored —
our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics,
and Divines — and for what part of their memorable writ-
ings are we indebted to the Drama ? If we except one
period of our literature, the claim is wholly groundless ;
and at this day, the truth is so opposite to the claim, that

180 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

extravagance, affectation, and rant, are proverbially de-
nominated theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to
supercede the admirable implements of husbandry, now
in use, by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks,
it would not be more absurd than to advocate that clum-
sy machine of literature, the Theatre, by the side of the
popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is not con-
genial to our age or necessities. Its day is gone by — it
is in its dotage, as might be suspected, from the weak-
ness of the garrulous apologies which it puts forth.

It is a school of jnorals. — Yes, doubtless ! So the guil-
lotine is defended on the plea of humanity. Inquisitors
declare their racks and torture-beds to be the instru-
ments of love, affectionately admonishing the foUen of
the error of their ways. The slave-trade has been de-
fended on' the plea of humanity, and slavery is now
defended for its mercies. Were it necessary for any
school or party, doubtless we should hear arguments to
prove the Devil's grace, and the utility of his agency
among men.

But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to Thea-
tre-virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain questions.

Will any of you who have been to Theatres, please to
tell me vi'hether virtue ever received important acces-
sions from the gallery of Theatres ?

Will you tell me whether the Pit is a place where an
ordinarily modest man would love to seat his children ?

Was ever a Theatre known where a prayer at the
opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be tor-
mentingly discordant ?

How does it happen, that in a school for morals, the
teachers never learn their own lessons ?

POPULAR AMUSEMKNTS. 181

Would you allow a son or daughter to associate alone
with actors or actresses ?

Do these men who promote virtue so zealously lohen
actiiig, take any part in public moral enterprises, when
their stage dresses are off?

Which would surprise you most, to see actors steadily
at Church, or to see Christians steadily at a Theatre ?
Would not both strike you as singular incongruities ?

What is the reason that loose and abandoned men
abhor religion in a Church, and love it so much in a
Theatre ?

Since the Theatre is the handmaid of virtue, why are
drinking houses so necessary to its neighborhood, yet so
offensive to Churches ? The trustees of the Tremont
Theatre in Boston, publicly protested against an order of
council forbidding liquor to be sold on the premises, on
the ground that it was impossible to support the Thea-
tre without it.

I am told that Christians do attend the Theatres. Then
I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A holy monk
reproached the devil for stealing a young man who was
found at the Theatre. He promptly replied, "I found
him on my premises, and took him."

But, it is said, if Christians would take Theatres in
hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men, they
might become the handmaids of religion. The Church
has had an intimate acquaintance with the Theatre for
eighteen hundred years. During that period, every
available agent for the diffusion of morality has been
earnestly tried. The Drama has been tried. The re-
sult is, that familiarity has bred contempt and abhor-
rence. If after so long and thorough an acquaintance,
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182 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

the Church stands the mortal enemy of Theatres, the
testimony is conclusive. It is the evidence of genera-
tions speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest
men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any lon-
ger the precincts of the Church, with impudent proposals
of alliance. When the Church needs an alliance it will
not look for it in the kennel. Ah ! what a blissful scene
would that be — the Church and Theatre imparadised in
each other's arms ! What a sweet conjunction would be
made, could we build our Churches so as to preach in the
morning, and play in them by night I And how melting
it would be, beyond the love of David and Jonathan, to
see minister and actor in loving embrace ; one slaying
Satan by direct thrusts of plain preaching, and the other
sucking his very life out by the enchantment of the
Drama ! To this millennial scene of Church and Thea-
tre, I only suggest a single improvement : that the vestry
be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, when not wanted for
prayer-meetings ; the Sabbath-school room should be
furnished with card-tables, and useful texts of scripture
might be printed on the cards, for the pious meditations
of gamblers during the intervals of play and worship.
When the very idea of such a thing is comedy even to
farce, what would its realization be ?

But if these places are jmt down, men will go to w'orse
ones. Where will they find worse ones ? Are those
who go to the Theatre, the Circus, the Race-course, the
men who abstain from worse places ? It is notorious
that the crowd of theatre-goers are vomited up from
these worse places. It is notorious that the Theatre is
the door to all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this
infamous place that the young learn to love those vi-

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 133

cious associates and practices to which, else, they would
liave been strangers. Half the victims of the gallows
and of the Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools
for morals were to them the gate of debauchery, the
porch of pollution, the vestibule of the very house of
Death.

The lyvama makes one acquainted with human life, and.
with nature. It is too true. There is scarcely an evil
incident to human life, which may not be fully learned
at the Theatre. Here flourishes every variety of wit —
ridicule of sacred things, burlesques of religion, and li-
centious douhle-entendres. No where can so much of
this lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the Thea-
tre. There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice;
amours are consecrated ; license is prospered ; and the
young come away alive to the glorious liberty of con-
quest and lust. But the stage is not the only place
about the Drama where human nature is learned. In
the Boxes the young may make the acquaintance of
those who abhor home and domestic quiet ; of those
who glory in profusion and obtrusive display ; of those
who expend all, and more than their earnings, upon gay
clothes and jewelry ; of those who think it no harm to
borrow their money ivithout leave from their employer's
till ; of those who despise vulgar appetite, but affect po-
lished and genteel licentiousness. Or, he may go to the
I'it, and learn the whole round of villain-life, from mas-
ters in the art. He may sit down among thieves, blood-
loving scoundrels, swindlers, broken-down men of plea-
sure— the coarse, the vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman,
the infernal. Or, if still more of human nature is wished,
he can learn yet more ; for the Theatre epitomizes every

184 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

degree of corruption. Let the virtuous young scholar
go to the Gallery, and learn there, decency, modesty,
and refinement, among the quarrelling, drunken, ogling,
mincing, brutal women of the brothel ! Ah ! there is no
place like the Theatre for learning hmjian nature ! A
young man can gather up more experimental knowledge
here in a week, than elsewhere in half a year. But I
wonder that the Drama should ever confess the fact ;
and yet more, that it should lustily plead in self-defence,
that Theatres teach ?nen so 7)iuch of human nature! Here
are brilliant bars, to teach the young to drink ; here are
gay companions, to undo in half an hour the scruples
formed by an education of years ; here are pimps of
pleasure, to delude the brain with bewildering sophisms
of license ; here is ])leasure, all flushed in its gayest,
boldest, most fascinating forms ; and few there be who
cm resist its wiles, and fewer 3'et who can yield to
them and escape ruin. ]f you would pervert the taste —
go to the Theatre. If you would inibibe false views —
go to the Theatre. If you would eiface as speedily as
possible all qualms of conscience — go to the Theatre. If
you would put yourself irreconcilably against the spirit
of virtue and religion — go to the Theatre. If you would
be infected with each particular vice in the catalogue of
Depravity — go to the Theatre. Let parents, who wish
to make their children weary of home and quiet domes-
tic enjoyments, take them to the Theatre. If it be de-
sirable for the young to loathe industry and didactic
reading, and burn for fierce excitements, and seek them
by stealth or through pilferings, if need be — then send
them to the Theatre. It is notorious that the bill of fare
at these temples of pleasure is made up to the taste of

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 183

the lower appetites ; that low comedy, and lower farce,
running into absolute obscenity, are the only means of
filling a house. Theatres which should exhibit nothing
but the classic Drama, would exhibit it to empty seats.
They must be corrupt, to live ; and those who attend
them will be corrupted.

Let me turn your attention to several reasons which
should incline every young man to foreswear such crimi-
nal amusements.

I. The first reason is, their waste of time. I do not
mean that they waste only the time consumed while
you are within them ; but they make you waste your
time afterwards. You will go once, and wish to go
again ; you will go twice, and seek it a third time ;
you will go a third time, — a. fourth; and whenever the
bill flames, you will be seized with a restlessness and
craving to go, until the appetite will become a passion.
You will then waste your nights : your mornings being
heavy, melancholy, and stupid, you will waste them.
Your day will next be confused and crowded ; your
duties poorly executed or deferred; habits of arrant
shiftlessness will ensue ; and day by day, industry will
grow tiresome, and leisure sweeter, until you are a was-
ter of time — an idle man ; and if not a rogue, you will
be a fortunate exception.

II. You ought not to countenance these things, Z/"-
cause they will ivaste your money. Young gentlemen !
squandering is as shameful as hoarding. A fool can throw
away, and a fool can lock up ; but it is a wise man,
who, neither parsimonious nor profuse, steers the mid-
dle course of generous economy and frugal liberality.
A young m.an, at first, thinks that all he spends at such
16*

186 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

places, is the ticket-price of the Theatre, or the small
bet on the races ; and this he knows is not much. But
this is certainly not the whole bill — nor half.

First, you pay your entrance. But there are a thou-
sand petty luxuries which one must not neglect, or cus-
tom will call him niggard. You must buy your cigars,
and your friend's. You must buy your juleps, and treat
in your turn. You must occasionally wait on your lady,
and she must be comforted with • divers confections.
You cannot go to such places in homely working dress ;
new and costlier clothes must be bought. All your
companions have jewelry, — you will want a ring, or a
seal, or a golden watch, or an ebony cane, a silver tooth-
pick, or quizzing glass. Thus, item presses upon item,
and in the year a long i)\l\ runs up of money spent for
Ultle trifles.

But if all this money could buy you oft' from the yet
worse eftects, the bargain would not be so dear. But
compare, if you please, this mode of expenditure with
the j)rinciple of your ordinary expense. In all ordi-
nary and business-transactions you get an equivalent for
your money, — either food for support, or clothes for
comfoi't, or permanent property. But when a young
man has spent one or two hundred dollars for the The-
atre, Circus, Races, Balls, and revelling, what has he to
show for it at the end of the year? Nothing at all
good, and much that is bad. You sink your money as
really as if you threw it into the sea; and you do it in
such a way that you fprm habits of careless expense. You
lose all sense of the value of j)ropert.y; and when a man
sees no value in property, he will see no necessity for
labor ; and when he is lazy and careless of property,

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 187

both, he will be dislwnesl. Thus, a habit which seems
innocent — tlie habit of trifling with property — often de-
generates to worthlessness, indolence, and roguerv.

ni. Such pleasures are incompatible with your ordi-
nary pursuits.

The very way to ruin an honest business is to be
ashamed of it, or to put along side of it something which
a man loves better. There can be no industrial calling
so exciting as the Theatre, the Circus, and the Races.
If you wish to make your real business very stupid and
hateful, visit such places. After the glare of the Theatre
has dazzled your eyes, your blacksmith-shop will look
smuttier than ever it did before. After you have seen
stalwart heroes pounding their antagonists, you will find
it a dull business to pound iron ; and a valiant apprentice
who has seen such gracious glances of love, and such rap-
turous kissing of hands, will hate to dirty his heroic fin-
gers with mortar, or by rolling felt on the hatter's board.
If a man had a homely, but most useful wife — patient,
kind, intelligent, hopeful in sorrow and cheerful in pros-
perity, but yet very plain, very homely, — would he be
wise to bring under his roof a fascinating and artful
beauty 1 would the contrast, and her w iles, make him
love his own wife better? Young gentlemen, your
wives are your industrial callings ! These raree-shows
are artful jades, dressed up on purpose to purloin your
aflections. Let no man be led to commit adultery with
a Theatre, against the rights of his own trade.

IV. Another reason why you should let alone these
deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage you in bad
company. To the Theatre, the Ball, the Circus, the
Race-course, the gaming-table, resort all the idle, the

188 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

dissipated, the rogues, the licentious, the epicures, the
gluttons, the artful jades, the immodest prudes, the joy-
ous, the worthless, the refuse. When you go, you will
not, at first, take introduction to them all, but to those
nearest like yourself; by them, the way will be opened
to others. And a very great evil has befallen a young
man, when wicked men feel that they have a right to his
acquaintance. When I see a gambler slapping a young-
mechanic on the back ; or a lecherous scoundrel sutiusing
a young man's cheek by a story at which, despite his
blushes, he yet laughs ; I know the youth has been guilty
of criminal indiscretion, or these men could not ap-
proach him thus. That is a brave and strong heart that
can stand up pure in a company of artful wretches.
When wicked men mean to seduce a young man, so
tremendous are the odds in favor of practised experi-
ence against innocence, that there is not one chance in
a thousand, if the young man lets ihem approach liim.
Let every young man remember that he carries, by
nature, a breast of passions just such as bad men have.
With youth, they slumber ; but temptation can wake
them, bad men can influence them ; they know the
road, they know how to serenade the heart ; how to
raise the sash, and flope with each passion. There is
but one resource for innocence among men or women ;
and that is, an embargo upon all commerce of bad men.
Bar the window ! — bolt the door ! — nor answer their
strain, if they charm never so wisely ! In no other wav
can you be safe. So well am I assured of the power of
bad men to seduce the erring purity of man, that I pro-
nounce it next to impossible for man or woman to
escape, if they permit bad men to approach and dally

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 189

ivith them. Oh ! there is more than mngic in tempta-
tion, when it beams down upon the heart of man, like
the sun upon a morass ! At the noontide-hour of pu-
rity, the mists shall rise and wreath a thousand fantastic
forms of delusion ; and a sudden freak of passion, a sin-
gle gleam of the imagination, one sudden rush of the
capricious heart, and the resistance of years may be
prostrated in a moment, the heart entered by the besieg-
ing enemy, its rooms sought out, and every lovely affec-
tion rudely siezed by the invader's lust, and given to
ravishment and to ruin !

V. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, cir-
cus-riders, actors and racing jockeys, I pronounce tliem to
be men who live off of society without returning any
useful equivalent for their support. At the most lenient
sentence, they are a band of gay idlers. They do not
throw one cent into the stock of public good. They do
not make shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or any
thing else that is useful. A hostler is useful ; he per-
forms a necessary office. A scullion is useful ; some-
body must act his part. A street-sweeper, a chimney-
sweep, the seller of old clothes, a scavenger, a tinker, a
bootblack — all these men are respectable ; for though
their callings are very humble, they are founded on the
real wants of society. The bread which such men eat
is the representation of what they have done for society ;
not the bread of idleness, but of usefulness. But what
do pleasure-mongers do for a living ? — what do they
invent 1 — what do they make ? — what do they repair 1 —
what do they for the mind, for the body, for man, or
child, or beast ? The dog that gnaws a refuse bone,
pays for it in barking at a thief. The cat that purs its

190 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

gratitude for a morsel of meat, will clear- our house of
rats. But what do we get in return for supporting
whole loads of play-mongers, and circus-clowns ? They
eat, they drink, they giggle, they grimace, they strut in
gairish clothes — and what else ? They have not aflbrded
even useful amusement ; they are professional laugh-
makers ; their trade is comical or tragical huffoonery —
the trade of tickling men. We do not feel any need of
them, before they come ; and when they leave, the only
etfects resulting from their visit are, unruly boys, aping
apprentices, and unsteady workmen.

Now, upon principles of mere political economy, is it
wise to support a growing class of improvident idlers ?
If, at the top of society, the government should erect a
class of favored citizens, and pamper their idleness
with fat pensions, the indignation of the whole com-
munity would break out against such privileged aristo-
crats. But, we have, at the bottom of society, a set of
wandering, joking, dancing, fiddling aristocrats, whom
we support for the sake of their capers, grins, and caric-
atures upon life, and no one seems to think tliis an evil.

VI. But even this is cheap and wise, to the evil
which I shall mention. If these renegade morality-
teachers could guarantee us against all evil from their
doings, we might pay their support and think it a cheap
bargain. The direct and necessary effect of their pur-
suit, however, is to demoralize men. The tyranny which
taxes our money is mild and angelic, to the despotic
tyranny which taxes our morals.

Those who defend Theatres would scora to admit ac-
tors into their society. It is within the knowledge of all,
that men, who thus cater for yublic pleasure, are excluded

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 191

from respectable society. The general fact is not alter-
ed by the exceptions — and honorable exceptions there
are. But where there is one Siddons, and one Ellen
Tree, and one Fanny Kemble, how many hundred ac-
tresses are there who dare not venture within modest
society ? Where there is one Garrick and Sheridan, how
many thousand licentious wretches are there, whose act-
ing is but a means of sensual indulgence ? In the support
of gamblers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jockeys, a
Christian and industrious people are guilty of supporting
mere mischief-makers — men whose very heart is dis-
eased, and whose sores exhale contagion to all around
them. We pay moral assassins to stab the purity of om'
children. We warn our sons of temptation, and yet
plant the seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes and
thorns of the worst temptation. If to this strong lan-
guage, you answer, that these men are generous and
jovial, that their very business is to please, that they do
not mean to do harm, — I reply, that I do not charge
them with trying to produce immorality, but with pur-
suing a course which produces it, whether they try or
not. An evil example does harm by its own liberty,
without asking leave. Moral disease, like the plague, is
contagious, whether the patient wishes it or not. A vile
man infects his children in spite of himself. Criminals
make criminals, just as taint makes taint, disease makes
disease, plagues make plagues. Those who run the gay
round of pleasure cannot help dazzling the young, con-
founding their habits, and perverting their morals — it is
the very nature of their employment.

These demoralizing professions could not be sustained
but by the patronage of moral men. Where do the

192 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

clerks, the apprentices, the dissipated, get their money
which buys an entrance ? From whom is that money
drained, always, in every land, which supports vice ?
Unquestionably from the good, the laborious, the careful.
The skill, the enterprise, the labor, the good morals of
every nation, are always taxed for the expenses of vice.
Jails are built out of honest men's earnings. Courts are
supported from peaceful men's property. Penitentiaries
are built by the toil of virtue. Crime never pays its
own way. Vice has no hands to work, no head to cal-
culate. Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to waste ; and
good men, directly or indirectly, foot the bill.

At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the re-
turn of that bread which we wastefuUy cast upon the
waters ; when, all over the sea, men are fishing up the
wrecks of those argosies, and full freighted fortunes,
which foundered in the sad storm of recent times, — some
question might be asked about the economy of vice ; —
the economy of paying for our son's idleness ; the econ-
omy of maintaining a whole lazy profession of gamblers,
racers, actresses, and actors, — human, equine, and bellu-
ine ; — whose errand is mischief, and luxury, and license,
and giggling folly. It ought to be asked of men who groan
at a tax to pay their honest foreign debts, whether they
can be taxed to pay the bills of mountebanks ?*

* We cannot pay for honest lonns, but we can pay Elssler hundreds of thou-
sands for being an airy sylph! America can pay vagabond-fiddlers, strumpet-
dancers, fashionable actors, dancing-horses, and boxing-men ! Heaven forbid
that these should want !— but to pay honest debts, — indeed, indeed, we have
honorable scruples of conscience about that ! !

Let our foreign creditors dismiss their fears, and forgiv^ us the commercial
debt; write no more drowsy letters about public faith; let them write spicy
comedies, and send over fiddlers, and dancers, and[ actors, and singers ; — they
will soon collect the debt and keep us good natured ! After every extenuation
— hard times, deficient currency, want of market, &c., there is a deeper reason
than these at the bottom of our inert indebtedness. Living among the body
of the people, and having nothing to lose or gain by my opinions, I must say

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 193

It is astonishing how little the influence of those pro-
fessions has been considered, which exert themselves
mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. That
whole race of men, whose camp is the Theatre, the Cir-
cus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table, is a race whose in-
stinct is destruction, who live to corrupt, and live off
of the corruption which they make. For their sup-
port, we sacrifice annual hecatombs of youthful victims.
Even sober Christian men, look smilingly upon the gairish
outside of these trainbands of destruction ; and while we
see the results to be, uniformly, dissipation, idleness, dis-
honesty, vice, and crime, still they lull us with the lying
lyric of ^classic drama^ and ''human life,'' hnoralitij.'
^ poetry^ and ^divine comedy!''

Disguise it as you will, these men of pleasure are, the
world over, corrupters of youth. Upon no principle
of kindness can we tolerate them; no excuse is bold
enough; we can take bail from none of their weaknesses
— it is not safe to have them abroad even upon excessive
bail. You might as well take bail of lions, and allow scor-
pions to breed in our streets for a suitable license ; or for
a tax indulge assassins. Men whose life is given to evil

plainly, that the community are not sensitive to the disgrace of flagrant pub-
lic bankruptcy; they do not seem to care whether their public debt be paid or
not. I perceive no enthusiasm on that subject : it is not a topic for either
party, nor of anxious private conversation. A profound indebtedness, ruin-
ous to our credit and to our morals, is allowed to lie at the very bottom of
the abyss of dishonest indifference.

Men love to be taxed for their lusts ; there is an open exchequer for licen-
tiousness, and for giddy pleasure. We grow suddenly saving, when benevo-
lence asks alms, or justice duns for debts: we dole a pittance to suppliant
creditors, to be rid ot their clamor. But let the divine Fanny, with evolutions
extremely efficacious upon the feelings, fire the enthusiasm of a whole Theatre
of men, whose applauses rise — as she does; let this courageous dancer, almost
literally true to nature, disjilay her adventurous feats before a thousand men.
whose hearts are glowing furnaces of ihrice-heated lusts, and the very miser
will turn spendthrift; the land which will not pay its honest creditors, will
enrich a strolling harlot, and rain down upon the stage a stream of golden
LiDxe.", or golden coin, wreaths and rosy billet-doux !

17

194 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.

pleasure are, to ordinary criminals, what a universal pes-
tilence is to local disease. They fill the air, pervade the
community, and bring around every youth an amosphere
of death. Corrupters of youth have no mitigation of their
baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, their know-
ledge nothing, their varied accomplishments nothing.
These are only so many facilities for greater evil. Is a
serpent less deadly, because his burnished scales shine?
Shall a dove praise and court the vulture, because he has
such glossy plumage? The more accomplisments a bad
man has, the more dangerous is he ; — they are the gar-
lands which cover up the knife with which he will stab.
There is no such thing as good corrupters. You might
as well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a very le-
nient assassination, a grateful stench, or a pious devil.
We denounce them ; for it is our nature to loathe perfi-
dious corruption. We have no compunction to withhold
us. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb ; but who
mourns the wolf which rent it ? We weep for despoiled
innocence ; but who sheds a tear for the savage fiend,
who plucks away the flower of virtue ? We shudder
and pray for the shrieking victim of the Incjuisition ; but
who would spare the hoary Inquisitor, before whose
shriveled form the piteous maid implores relief in vain ?
Even thus, we palliate the sins of generous youth ; and
their downfall is our sorrow : but for their destroyers,
for the Corrupters of youth, who practice the infernal
chemistry of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice —
we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience. We lift
our heart to Him who beareth the iron rod of vengeance,
and pray for the appointed time of judgment. Ye mis-
creants ! think ye that ye are growing tall, and walking

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS

19^

safely, because God hath forgotten ? The bolt shall yet
smite you ! you shall be heard as the falling of an oak in
the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the more terrible
its resounding downfall ! Oh thou Corrupter of youth !
I would not take thy death, for all the pleasure of thy
guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt draw near to tlie
shadow of death. To the Christian, these shades are the
golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it meets
the earth and mingles with its shadows. But to thee,
these shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. Images
of terror in the Future shall dimly rise and beckon ; —
the ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out their
skinny hands to push thee forward ! Thou shall not
die unattended. Despair shall mock thee. Agony shall
tender to thy parched lips her fiery cup. Remorse shall
feel for thy heart, and rend it open. Good men shall
breathe freer at thy death, and utter thanksgiving when
thou art gone. Men shall place thy grave-stone as a
monument and testimony that a plague is stayed ; no
tear shall wet it, no mourner linger there ! And, as
borne on the blast, thy guilty spirit whistles toward the
gate of hell, the hideous shrieks of those whom thy hand
hath destroyed, shall pierce thee — hell's first welcome.
It is moved for thee ; it stirreth up the dead at thy com-
ing ! As a bird of prey, venturing out when a storm is
abroad, is caught up in the eddying whirlwind, and tossed,
ruffled and whirled, and at last wrapped and hid in the
dark cloud, and lost to our sight — so, in the bosom of that
everlasting storm which rains perpetual misery in hell,
shalt thou, CORRUPTER OF YOUTH ! be forever hidden from
our view : — and may God wipe out the very thougiits of
thee from our memorv^

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